Using OPCNetView to see your OPC client and server connections

As someone who develops, installs, configures or maintains OPCClients and OPCServers, how many times have you heard one or both of these questions?

• How can I verify what OPCServer(s) my OPCClient is connected to?
• How can I really know what OPCClients are connected to that OPCServer?

This whitepaper demonstrates how Jemmac’s OPCNetView product can help you answer these questions quickly and accurately.

First, it’s worth clarifying why the above questions are asked as often as they are. By understanding the reasons for these questions we will have a better appreciation of why timely, accurate answers will add value to your business and therefore understand why a tool like OPCNetView is valuable to you.

How can I verify what OPCServer(s) my OPCClient is connected to? This questions gets asked for a range of very valid reasons including:

• My OPCClient configuration is rather complex and I’d really like an independent way of verifying that I’ve set it up correctly.
• I’m concerned about the validity of the data my OPCClient is reporting. I’m not sure it’s getting the data from where I think it should be coming.
• I have an OPC Redundancy solution in place and I’d like to understand where my OPCClient is currently getting data from.
• I’ve configured a tunnelling solution and I’d like to understand where my OPCClient is currently getting data from.

How can I really know what OPCClients are connected to that OPCServer? This is probably the more common question and also gets asked for a range of underlying reasons:

• OPCServer performance issues – the OPCServer appears to be running slowly and which is impacting its ability to perform the reads and writes issued by the optimization OPCClient application in a timely manner ... production levels are reduced as a result. We suspect that the OPCServer performance problem is due to non production OPCClient I/O through the OPCServer.
• We need to apply Microsoft security Hot Fixes to the OPCServer node (requiring a reboot) and we need to understand the affected OPCClients.
• The OPCServer has a connection based licence limit and some unknown OPCClients appeared to have connected and consumed the slots normally reserved for my control OPCClients.
• The OPCServer is reporting a huge amount of concurrent connections. One or more of the connected OPCClients must be mis-behaving, but which one? If I can’t fix this problem quickly I know my OPCServer will run out of resources and stop working.

Author: Jemmac Software

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Jemmac works hard to deliver software solutions that add genuine business benefit and competitive advantage to our customer’s businesses. We have extensive IT experience, take a strong pride in what we do and understand that having successful customers is the key to our own success. We have an enviable track record of developing, deploying and supporting truely industrial strength OPC solutions and products. We are based on the Cranfield Technology Park in Bedfordshire, England.