M580 HSBY with Dual (redundant) OPCUA network

[RoozeeR]

My customer wants to implement a M580 HotStandby with a dual OPCUA connection to a redundant SCADA server. Dual network for redundancy reason.

See attached network architecture of A M580 HSBY system with Dual BMENUA0100 server. According to the documentation 2 BMENUA0100 modules can be used in a M580 system (4 total in a HSBY).

The BMENOC modules are used for communication to different other systems in separated networks.

Question: Do you have any remarks, attention points, or good/bad experience using dual BMENUA0100 modules in a HSBY?

[KJBER]

I tried with one NUA card in each PLS rack, with Aveva as Scada system. We had to make custom scripts in scada to investigate the service level and isbadquality of the OPC UA connections from the NUA communication cards, and also force PLC changeover from SCADA with this setup. The NUA also seem to have a slow samling intervall (0.5-3 seconds) when you have many tags (2000+ tags).

Based on this one project then I would not recommend it. Use NUA cards if you have to share certain variables with 3 party vendor with a OPC UA server, and use conventional connection to scada.

Hopefully it will get better in the future.

[Trinxs1]

My comment does not relate specifically to Hot standby.
I have a customer who is using NUA modules in a hot standby system and sees the limit of 50000 tags per module as a concern.  I assume that by having two modules we can access 100000 nodes (tags) per CPU.

Does anyone else have customers who require access to more than 100 000 tags?

[RoozeeR]

Hi Trinx,

The limitation of 100.000 Items refers to the size of the data-dictionary. As M580 has only 1 data-dictionary, shared by both BMENUA's they will have both this same limitation. So any CPU with more than 100.000 Items in the data-dictionary will be impossible even using multiple BMENUA's.

[SESA668293]

Hi,

I have a question from a customer about using OPCUA cards with a redundant PLC Can you help me answer it because i found nothing.

Today, it is possible to configure an IP address for them on api A and api B.
However, it is not possible to configure a virtual address that corresponds to the OPCUA card on the active PLC (as is done on the cpu or noc).
This makes things more complicated on the SCADA side because you have to manage which board the IO server should communicate on.

Is this a planned feature or other solution ?

Myrtille SAE

[THLA]

Following this thread. I have the same issue. 
If we have a switchover on "PLC A" from Master to Standby on a PLC, the SCADA does not follow as long as the I/O device "PLC A" is still active. Since "PLC A" now becomes the standby PLC, you loose WRITE permission to the PLC from SCADA. Until either "PLC A" becomes master again, or until it actually becomes inavailable for communication and the SCADA system switches over to standby. 

For reference I am using PlantSCADA 2023 R2 and HotStandby M580 PLCs with BMENUA OPC cards.

[leo_arabolu]

Hy to all.

Same issues using Plant SCADA 2023 v8.40 Update 13 and HSBY M580 PLC's with BMENUA0100 OPC UA cards. 

Any suggestion or solution will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[KJBER]

You need to monitor the service level from both BMENUA0100 cards, and script a "changeover" in the scada system to always read/write to server that is connected to Primary PLC. That is the modules that has service level 255 (above 200). The standby will have service level 199 if it is standby and ready.

[rkardos]

I've had issues losing communication with the NUA module in the standby rack in testing, haven't used it in a production environment.

You might have a problem having sufficient rack power with all those network modules. I couldn't find a power supply large enough to have 2 x NUA + 2 x NOC modules.