Data Storage, Analysis, and Maintenance Components

Data collected by the collection/migration components is stored in the Historian server (or cloud). You can then analyze and maintain the data using the following components:
Historian Alarms and Events
Historian Alarms and Events provides tools to collect, archive, and retrieve alarms and events data in Historian.

Refer to Historian Alarms and Events for more information.

Historian Administrator
A Historian Administrator provides a graphical user interface for performing Historian maintenance functions in a Windows environment including:
  • Tag addition, deletion, and configuration.
  • Maintaining and backing up archive files.
  • Data collector configuration.
  • Security configuration.
  • Searching and analyzing system alerts and messages.
  • A Calculation collector with the ability to create a new tag based on calculations, and stores the result as time series data – available with Historian Administrator only.
  • Setting up your OPC Classic HDA server – available with Historian Administrator only.

Refer to the Using Historian Administrator manual for more information.

Historian Web Admin console
The Historian Web Admin consoles provides a dashboard, which displays the health of the system in one convenient location. The dashboard is available in the Web Admin console only. You can view the following diagnostics details:
  • Data Node Diagnostics – Displays the Historian servers connected to the system.
  • Collector Diagnostics – Displays the details of the faulty collectors.
  • Client Diagnostics – Displays the top five busiest clients connected to the system.

The dashboard provides interactive configuration management, which helps you configure mirror nodes (available in the Web Admin console only), tags, collectors, data stores, and archives. However, the functionality of the Calculation collector and the ability to configure your OPC HDA web server are not included in the Web Administrator.

The Historian admin console uses a client-access license (CAL).

Historian Server
Historian Server performs the following tasks:
  • Manages all system configuration information.
  • Manages system security, audit trails, and messaging.
  • Services write and read requests from distributed clients.
  • Performs final data compression.
  • Manages archive files.
Historian Diagnostics Manager
The Historian Diagnostics Manager monitors the health of the Historian system and executes a few rules on the nodes, collectors, and clients, and generates the appropriate fault record. The details of these faults are displayed in the Admin Console Dashboard.
The following are the faults and their severity level:
Fault Type Fault Description Fault Level
Collector Status Fault Generated when the collector goes to the Unknown or Stopped state. Error
Collector Overrun Fault Generated when at least one overrun occurs on a collector in last 24 hours. Warning
Collector OutOfOrder Fault Generated when at least one OutOfOrder occurs on a collector in last 24 hours. Information
Collector StoreForward Fault Generated when the collector Last Data Sample Time Stamp is delayed by more than an hour. Information
Collector ConnectDisconnect Fault Generated when the collector is Disconnected and connected at least once in last 24 hours. Information
Service DiskSpace Fault Generated when a node disk space is about to reach its free space limit. Warning
Client InActive Fault Generated when a client is not active for the last one hour. Information
Client BusyRead Fault Generated when the client makes relatively more number of reads per minute. Information
Client BusyWrite Fault Generated when the client makes relatively more number of writes per minute. Information
Client TimedOutRead Fault Generated when the client makes a timed out read query. Warning
Historian Client Manager
The Historian Client Manager acts as the client connection manager and message router for the system. The Client Manager will examine messages and forward them to the correct Data Archiver or to the Configuration Manager. This service is deployed only for mirrored systems.
Historian Configuration Manager
The Historian Configuration Manager maintains and distributes the entire system configuration. There can be multiple Historian nodes but only one Configuration Manager. This Configuration Manager node is used to store system configuration, such as tag names, collector names and Historian Node names. This service is deployed only for mirrored systems.
Remote Collector Manager
Typically, collectors are distributed geographically, and so, accessing them can be challenging and not cost-effective. To overcome this challenge, the Remote Collector Management agent provides the ability to manage collectors remotely.
Historian Tomcat Container
An instance of Tomcat is used exclusively by Historian as an open source Java-based Web server to support the Historian Web Administrator and Trend tool. It supports SSL and the use of certificates for enhanced security.
UAA Tomcat Container
An instance of Tomcat is used exclusively by Historian as an open source Java-based Web server to support the External UAA.
Historian PostgreSQL Database
An instance of PostgreSQL is used exclusively by Historian to store tag names to improve searching for tags in the Trend tool and Web Admin console.
UAA PostgreSQL Database
An instance of PostgreSQL is used exclusively by Historian to store UAA details.
Reverse Proxy Service
Provides secure connection by supporting https protocol.
Historian Indexing Service
This is an indexing service that periodically runs against the Historian tag database, creates a tag index, and stores information in the PostgreSQL database instance, a preferred method to allow for quick search results.
Excel Add-In
The Historian Excel Add-In is a very useful tool for presenting and analyzing data stored in archive files. Using this tool, you can design custom reports of selected data, automatically process the information, and analyze the results. You can also use it for performing tag maintenance functions in Historian, such as adding tags, importing or exporting tags, or editing tag parameters.

For more information, refer to Using the Historian Excel Add-In.

Excel Add-in for Operations Hub
The Historian Excel Add-in enables you to query historical data of objects and object types defined in Operations Hub. You should install Operations Hub to use this Excel Add-in.
Customers purchasing Historian Standard or Enterprise licenses now receive a no-cost license for the Operations Hub Server and Historian Analysis run-time application. This Operations Hub Server enables customers to define an asset model including tag mapping. The Historian Analysis application is a pre-built Operations Hub HTML5 application that enables users to do advanced trend analyses, including the ability to make annotations.

Excel Add-in for Operations Hub is tested with Excel 2016, 2019 versions (32 and 64 bit).

Historian OPC Classic HDA server
The Historian OPC Classic HDA server reads the raw data stored in Historian and sends it to the connected OPC Classic HDA collectors. The Historian OPC Classic HDA server is in compliance with OPC Server HDA 1.20 standards.

Refer to the The Historian OPC Classic HDA server manual for more information.

Historian SDK
The Software Development Kit (SDK) is designed for writing Visual Basic (VB) or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Scripts. Using the SDK, you can develop your own scripts to perform selected repetitive or complex tasks or to make your own custom user interface. To use the SDK, create a VB/VBA project with the SDK as a project reference. Refer to the SDK Help system for more information.