Methodology

Understanding best practice architecture is important prior to installation.  Whenever possible, Canary Collectors and the Store and Forward (SaF) service should be installed local to the data source.  Typically the Canary Historian and other components are installed on a separate server.

The method for sending data to the Canary Historian is using the SaF service. Each Data Collector is paired with a SaF service that buffers data passed into it and communicates that data in real time to the another SaF service that is paired with a Historian. This communication happens over a single gRPC endpoint.

When the connection between the two SaF services is made, data can be securely sent and stored into the Canary Historian. If the connection is broken, the SaF service on the Collector side caches data to the local disk, backfilling when the connection is reestablished.

System Requirements

Both the SaF service and the Canary Data Collectors require very low resources and can be installed on nearly any modern Windows machine.  Follow these steps to ensure successful data logging to the Canary System.

1. Determine the type of Data Collector required.
2. Identify whether the data source can host the Data Collector and SaF.  Recommendations are as follows but can be reduced if data load is light.
   • Windows OS (required)
   • Quad core processor
   • 4 GB RAM
   • Suitable disk space for potential data buffering
   • .NET Framework 4.7.1 or greater (required)
3. Install appropriate software using the Canary System Installer.

Install SaF and Data Collector

Again, best practice is to install these components local to the data source (e.g., on the OPC server or SCADA server). 

1. Use the received download link to download the Canary Installer from a Canary representative.
2. Run the file CanaryInstaller-*.*.*.exe with elevated privileges.
3. Deselect all items and choose only the Admin Service, Identity (local or remote*), Store & Forward, Admin Client, and applicable Data Collector.
4. Select Next and complete the installation.

*In most cases, the Identity service will be remote from the Data Collector, assuming the Data Collector is installed remotely from the Historian. In that case, the server name of the Identity service can be specified in the next screen.

Data Logging Security

If wishing to control which clients can write data to the Historian, Tag Security can be enabled from within the Identity tile>Security>Tag Security screen. From here the user can control which users/groups have write permissions and the Views/DataSets they can write to. When Tag Security is enabled within the Identity service, any remote SaF service will need to be configured with an API token to write data to the Historian. See How to Configure a Collector when Tag Security is Enabled for more details.