SPONSORED BY: INTEGRATION OBJECTS
In today’s fiercely competitive industrial landscape, the need to seamlessly integrate OT and IT systems, whether on-site or in the cloud, has evolved from being merely an option into a paramount challenge that can no longer be disregarded. OPC UA has quickly become the go-to solution across various industries to meet various system integration requirements. Its appeal stems from its heightened security features and its role as an open, dependable conduit for data transfer between servers and clients.
It is worth noting that factories, plants, and various other industrial facilities employ an array of protocols on the OT side, and converting all these protocols to OPC UA often requires the deployment of an OPC UA server for each individual data source. This undertaking brings a confluence of drawbacks, including amplified costs, susceptibility to points of failure, maintenance complexity, and an elongated deployment cycle. In an ideal world, we would have a single OPC UA server, that would be installed one time and supports multiple protocols.
This is where Integration Objects’ SIOTH® OPC UA Universal Server comes into play. This solution acts as a central hub, facilitating data exchange and integration across a wide range of the industrial spectrum.
OPC UA Universal Server Built with SIOTH®
SIOTH®, short for Smart IoT Highway, is a secure integration platform for unifying and structuring disparate and multiple IT and OT data sources. It is an IT & OT connectors fabric that can be configured to meet specific users’ interoperability requirements.
Using the user-friendly graphical environment of SIOTH® platform configurator, a multi-protocol OPC UA Server can be built in a matter of minutes, streamlining the setup process significantly. This generates the OPC UA Universal Server.
The OPC UA Universal Server provides:
- A versatile solution for collecting data from a single or a multitude of diverse data sources, all the while seamlessly supporting multiple industrial and IoT protocols in parallel.
- Capabilities in OPC UA, DA (Data Access), HDA (Historical Data Access), and AE (Alarms and Events).
- Compliance with IEC 62443 industrial cybersecurity standards by supporting OPC UA security options and featuring multiple encryption options.
- Automatic reconnection and buffering capabilities and automatic reconnections to ensure data availability in case of communication glitches.
With this level of interoperability, users can focus on building applications and business logic. Furthermore, they can combine the OPC UA Universal Server with SIOTH® reasoning engine in order to execute rules, calculations, events detection and workflows, thus enhancing its adaptability to a variety of industrial contexts.
Download OPC UA Universal Server Datasheet
OPC UA Universal Server: Features and Benefits
The OPC UA Universal Server connects a wide range of devices and systems, such as OPC servers, PLCs, SCADA systems, and other industrial systems to the cloud or various other IT systems.
The server offers several key features and capabilities designed to empower organizations in the realm of data management and industrial operations:
- Data collection and integration: the OPC UA Universal server supports several industrial protocols such as Modbus, S7, DNP3, BACNet, SNMP, … to gather data from a diverse array of sources, including automation devices and systems and seamlessly integrates this data with other IT systems. It can also collect data from enterprise databases, historians and flat files.
- Cloud connectivity: seamlessly bridging the gap between on-premises systems and cloud platforms, the OPC UA Universal Server offers cloud connectivity via MQTT protocol.
- Industrial Security: recognizing the paramount importance of data and system security, the server includes robust security features. These safeguard shield data and systems from cyber threats and breaches, ensuring data integrity and operational continuity.
- Scalability: The OPC UA Universal Server supports upward scalability to extend integration of millions of endpoints within your system.
- Alarm management: the OPC UA Universal Server embeds an alarm management add-on where users can configure alarms on top of the collected data such as high alarms, low alarms, etc. This ensures that issues are addressed promptly, minimizing downtime and disruptions.
- Real-time data visualization using Unified HMI: through SIOTH® real-time data visualization capabilities, users can configure web based dashboards and SCADA like displays using the real-time data, historical data and alarms of the OPC UA Universal Server so organizations can gain real-time insights into their operations. This enables informed, on-the-fly decision-making based on up-to-the-minute data
- Redundancy: redundancy in OPC UA Universal Server encompasses the capability to configure primary and secondary servers, with the primary server actively serving client requests while the secondary server remains on standby. This redundancy mechanism guarantees uninterrupted data communication and maintains operational continuity even when the primary server experiences issues.
In essence, the OPC UA Universal Server equips organizations with a comprehensive suite of tools and capabilities to harness the full potential of their data, enhance operational efficiency and strengthen the security of their industrial systems.
How to configure the OPC UA Universal Server?
You can watch the video tutorial below on how to configure the OPC UA Universal Server. This video dives into the wide set of applications that can be built using the SIOTH® platform.
About Integration Objects
Integration Objects is world-leading industry 4.0 solutions provider that empowers businesses to accelerate their digital transformation through robust and reliable solutions. We offer a wide range of applications including, Industrial IoT (IIoT), cyber security, Big Data Analytics, C4ISR, and process automation for Defense and Governmental Institutions.