An Overview of the Canary System

The Canary System installer consists of three component groupings:

• Historian Server
• Data Collectors
• Client Tools

If following best practices, data collection tools should be installed on a different machine than the Historian and other Canary tools.  

The Canary Data Collectors should be installed as close to the data source as possible.  This likely means you will install the Canary Collectors along with the Store and Forward (SaF) service on your OPC Server, MQTT Broker, or SCADA server.

Additionally, the Canary Historian server software components should be installed on their own stand-alone VM or physical server.  Note, not all components are pictured.  A complete architecture of all Canary software components can be found in more in-depth architecture articles.

Installation

The same installation program is used for all parts of the Canary System.  Typically, different modules are installed based on the purpose of the server.  These purposes usually are:

• Data storage and contextualization
• Data collection
• Client tools for reporting

See Installing the Canary System for more details.

Licensing

All licensing is server-based and does not require client machines to be licensed. The only components requiring licensing are the Historian, Axiom, Views (which includes the Excel Add-In), and ODBC. Canary Collectors (such as OPC, MQTT, CSV, etc.) do not require licensing and can therefore be deployed as many time as needed.

See How to License the Canary System for more details.

Security

The Identity service is responsible for authenticating users and authorizing what they can or cannot do within the Canary system. By default, Canary uses Windows AD to authenticate its users as seen when attempting to use one of its client tools (Canary Admin, Axiom, and the Excel Add-In).

If wishing to use a different identity provider, one can be created within the Identity tile of the Canary Admin. Canary supports OpenID Connect (OIDC). See How to Add an OpenID Connect Identity Provider for more details.

Data Storage

Storage Methodology

Canary has designed its solution to eliminate the need of a database administrator to manage the Historian. To achieve this, Canary uses a simple but elegant method to segment the data in two ways.

First is the creation of DataSets, or a group of tags with logically associated data. DataSets play a key role in logging, storing, and reading data. Before creating a new logging session, the admin must designate a DataSet in which to send data.

Second is the Historical Database (HDB) file, segmented by time periods. These two organizational structures allow for database expansion without affecting performance or requiring any management of size or duration.

Generally, a new HDB file is created daily. Once closed, each HDB file goes through loss-less compression to minimize the Historian’s storage requirements. Canary stores data using lossless data compression to ensure data written to the Historian is identical to the data later read from it. Canary algorithms achieve a data compression rate beyond sixty percent.

Each HDB file contains tag names, tag properties, annotations, and TVQ units comprised of a timestamp, a value, and a quality score. Values can include Booleans, Integers, Floats, Doubles, or Strings. Canary writes all three TVQ components together ensuring the value is always paired with the correct timestamp and quality.

How to Create a New DataSet

A DataSet can be created manually within the Historian itself, or automatically, depending on the Canary Collector being used. The following steps show how to create a DataSet manually through the Historian.

1. Open the Canary Admin client and navigate to the Historian tile>Configuration tab at the bottom.
2. Select NEW at the top.

3. Name the DataSet with a unique name that does not begin or end with a 'space' and avoids the following characters:

   Colon	:
   Equals	=
   Forward Slash	/
   Asterisk	*
   Backwards Slash	\
   Percentage Sign	%
   Question Mark	?
   Greater than or equal to	< >

4. By default, all DataSets are stored in C:\Historian Data. In the Path field, type a new path or select Browse to change the directory location of the data for the DataSet.
5. Select CREATE when finished.
6. Adjust the SETTINGS available within the right window (described below).

Keep the total number of DataSets below 400 and maintain less than 40,000 tags per DataSet. While there are no hard limits coded into the Historian, increasing beyond these numbers may result in performance issues or errors.

DataSet Settings

Dataset Directory

The Dataset Directory parameter displays the location of where the HDB files are stored for the selected DataSet. If wishing to change the storage location for ALL DataSets, see How to Change the Data Historian Location.

DataSet Validation Configuration

Background validation checks all DataSets for unvalidated HDB files. An unvalidated HDB file is indicated by a clock in the top left hand corner of the tile as shown on the Dec-22 HDB file below. 

By default, background validation is turned on. The background validation process may consume additional machine resources but ensures that HDB files do not contain incomplete or corrupt data values. 

A file remains unvalidated while it is still open for logging.  Typically files are validated each night as they Roll-Over. It is not recommended to uncheck background validation.

Configure Email Notifications for DataSets Not Logging Data

The Historian can be configured to send an email to the system admin(s) if a DataSet has not received any data in the specified period of time. 

1. Select the Email if no data received in checkbox and configure the number of minutes. 
2. Designate the user(s) to whom the email will be sent to. Multiple recipients are separated with a comma.
   
3. Configure the Canary system to send email alerts.

Enabling this feature is a recommended precaution for monitoring the network connection break between the Store and Forward (SaF) services, monitoring the status of a logging machine, or ensuring that logging equipment maintains functionality.

Logging Data

Data Collectors

Choose the Knowledge Base article below based on the data collector you wish to use.

OPC UA

MQTT

OPC DA

Canary Module for Ignition

SQL

CSV File Import

Trending Data

Now that you are logging data and storing it to a DataSet, you can trend your data in Axiom.

To learn how to use the Axiom tool, visit the Canary Academy and register for the Axiom Trending module.

Launching Axiom

Launch a web browser from a machine that has network access to the Canary Historian Server.

Enter the machine name of the Canary Historian Server as the web address. For instance, if the server name is ‘CanaryHistorian’ enter the following – https://canaryhistorian.

You will be prompted to authenticate using your credentials based upon the identity provider (IDP) that is configured. By default, Canary uses Windows AD to authenticate its users, but supports other IDP's including OpenID Connect.

You can now begin to use Axiom.