SPONSORED BY: PAESSLER
OPC UA has become the de facto standard in industrial environments. With its wide adoption, we’ve seen an increase in devices and systems that support it. This is why we included OPC UA sensors in Paessler PRTG monitoring software. And now we’ve gone a step further with OPC UA: Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server. PRTG OPC UA Server is designed to help OT teams get monitoring data from network components and the IIoT into their supervisory and control systems such as SCADA, DCS or MES.
What does Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server do?
OT infrastructure depends on network components, such as routers, switches, firewalls, and so on. If these components go down, it can negatively impact production processes. Despite how important these network components are for OT, they are often managed separately to the OT devices and systems – usually by an IT team. Plus, these devices often don’t communicate using protocols common in OT.
This can create a blind spot in the centralized overview that OT teams have on their supervisory and control systems: they can see the status of their OT devices and systems but have no view of the supporting network infrastructure.
Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server bridges the gap between the network components and the supervisory and control systems.
Here are three reasons why it’s important to include these components in your supervisory and control system such as SCADA, DCS or MES:
- Your OT teams will be able to see the health status of different network components
- You get central alarming in your supervisory and control system if these components fail
- You will be able to collect historical data from the network components to improve your Quality Assurance analyses.
How Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server Works
The idea behind PRTG OPC UA Server is to get monitoring data from components that do not communicate using OPC UA into an overview on an OPC UA-capable supervisory and control system.
- Paessler PRTG Network Monitor (separate license and active maintenance required) monitors the network infrastructure and IIoT components.
- In PRTG, you configure which monitoring data points you want to make available as OPC UA nodes. An example: a data point might be the status of a device, or specific information about it.
- From an OPC UA-capable supervisory and control system, you can read the OPC UA nodes and incorporate the monitoring data in your overview and alarming.
Centralized Overview and Alarms
The most important benefit of bringing the network components into an OT overview is to have all important monitoring in a centralized tool. This way, you can see the status of your entire OT infrastructure – including the supporting network components – in one place. What this also means is that you get all relevant alarms in your supervisory and control system, instead of needing multiple tools. Another benefit that can’t be ignored is that the combination of PRTG Network Monitor and PRTG OPC UA Server gives you a comprehensive monitoring solution for your IT and OT infrastructure.
In this video from automatica 2023 you can also see how PRTG in combination with PRTG OPC UA Server can provide a holistic overview of IT and OT and can also seamlessly integrated in supervisory systems: Digital Integrations in Supervisory Systems – YouTube
Do you have questions about Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server? Our expert team is looking forward to helping you. Or visit our booth 6-458 at SPS from 14. – 16.11. in Nuremberg.