About Collectors

A collector collects tag data from various data sources.

How tag data is stored if using collectors of on-premises Proficy Historian (TLS encryption is not used):
  1. Collectors send a request to the Azure Load Balancer to write tag data.
  2. Azure Load Balancer sends the request to HA Proxy. HA Proxy routes the traffic to Data Archiver. If user authentication is needed, the Data Archiver sends the request to Proficy Authentication, which verifies the user credentials stored in PostgreSQL. After authentication, Load Balancer confirms to the collectors that data can be sent.
  3. Data collected by the collector instances is sent to the Azure Load Balancer.
  4. Azure Load Balancer sends the data to HA Proxy and HA Proxy again routes the traffic to Data Archiver. After authentication, the Data Archiver stores the data in the Azure File Share in .iha files.
How tag data is stored if using Historian Collectors for Cloud (TLS encryption is used):
  1. Collectors send a request to the Azure Load Balancer to write tag data. Since the request is encrypted, port 443 is used.
  2. Azure Load Balancer forwards the request to HA Proxy. HA Proxy decrypts the request and sends it to the Data Archiver. If user authentication is needed, the Data Archiver sends the request to Proficy Authentication, which verifies the user credentials stored in PostgreSQL. After authentication, the Azure Load Balancer confirms to the collectors that data can be sent.
  3. Data collected by the collector instances is encrypted and sent to the Azure Load Balancer using port 443. The Azure Load Balancer forwards request to HA Proxy.
  4. HA Proxy decrypts the data and sends it to the Data Archiver. After authentication, the Data Archiver stores the data in the Azure File Share in .iha files.
How data is retrieved:
  1. Clients (that is, the Excel Addin, the Web Admin console, the REST Query service, or Historian Administrator) send a request to the Azure Load Balancer to retrieve data.
  2. The Azure Load Balancer sends the request to HA Proxy, and then HA Proxy forwards requests to the Data Archiver, which retrieves data from Azure File Shares. If, however, user authentication is needed, the Data Archiver sends the request to Proficy Authentication, which verifies the user credentials stored in PostgreSQL. After authentication, data is retrieved from Azure File Share.
To send data using a collector, you must:
  1. Install collectors.

    You can install collectors on multiple Windows machines. These machines can be on-premises or on an Azure Virtual Network (VNet).

  2. Create a collector instance.
Note: The following collectors are not supported by Proficy Historian for Azure Cloud:
  • The File collector
  • The HAB collector
  • The iFIX Alarms and Events collector
  • The OPC Classic Alarms and Events collector
  • The Windows Performance collector

What does SQ mean in the cloud output and what are the sub-quality values?

The full form of SQ is Sub Quality; the values range from 1 to 13.

The following are the sub-quality values:

ihOPCNonspecific = 0
ihOPCConfigurationError=1
ihOPCNotConnected=2
ihOPCDeviceFailure=3
ihOPCSensorFailure=4
ihOPCLastKnownValue=5
ihOPCCommFailure=6
ihOPCOutOfService=7
ihScaledOutOfRange=8
ihOffLine=9
ihNoValue=10
ihCalculationError=11
ihConditionCollectionHalted=12
ihCalculationTimeout=13