Introduction

General Information

Network Operational Performance Management is an important topic, as data communication bottlenecks have great impact on the bottom line and production servers. This software is a server for data acquisition which enables SNMP and Performance Monitor data to be available to any OPC-DA client, including data historian-based real-time performance management (RTPM) systems and OPC-DA compatible SCADA systems. It uses a fast and reliable data acquisition engine allowing massive real-time SNMP and WMI monitoring. Features include:

        Scan of multiple devices;

        Compatible with SNMP V1, V2C and V3 and WMI Devices;

        Intelligent scan load control;

        Statistical tags such as interface usage, error rates, broadcast and unicast rates;

        Full support to Device Traps;

        Data filtering (averaging);

        Compliant with the OPC DA2 specification;

        Historian Service;

System Requirements

This OPC server has the following minimal system requirements:

        Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 / 2003 SP2 / XP SP2;

        Intel/AMD processor @ 600MHz;

        128MB RAM;

        100Mb Hard drive for installation. ( Recommended 5Gb or more if you use Historian Service )

        Network interface card (Ethernet).

        Display resolution 800x600 (  Recommended Resolution 1024x768 )

Higher system hardware requirements may be necessary when scanning more than five thousand tags or when a large number of tags are scanned at a fast rate.

Server Overview

Server follow the requirements of the OPC specification to provide data access to an OPC client. They are compatible with OPC Data Access (DA) version 2.0 of the OPC interface and they can be used to monitor every reachable SNMP device that implements SNMP V1, V2C and V3 or every reachable computer running Windows with WMI enabled.  Server Core are heavily optimized to achieve high performance by measuring response times of every device and balancing server load to maintain the specified refresh rate for all devices. It is possible to customize scan parameters from each device or computer, like the number of multiple variables that are read in the same SNMP request allowing you to build the most optimized configuration for your network environment.

Tools Overview

XRatel Performance Suite provides two tools to manage servers and data (XRatel Server Configu and XRatel OPC Server Monitor) and a server to manage data acquisition for each technology: SNMP and WMI. With the other tools (Tag Explorer, Health Analyst and Report) is possible to view and analyse all data collected. These tools are listed below:
 

        XRatel OPC Server - This is the software responsible for data acquisition and delivery.

        XRatel Historian Service - This service is responsible to take all data collected by the Server and to store it for future view.

        XRatel Server Config - This tool helps you to configure both OPC Server and Historian Service. It allows you to indicate witch devices and tag should be monitored and recorded.

        XRatel OPC Server Monitor - Allows you to manage both servers, simplifying server reboot, configuration reloading and

        displaying statistics about them.

        XRatel Tag Explorer - This software can take all data stored by Historian Service, plotting charts and displaying values and alarms.

        XRatel Health Analyst - This software can take some tags data and show four charts in the same window for the last 60 minutes, 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days.

        XRatel Report - This tool allow you to generate a custom report with all data collected by Historian Service. In this report is possible to see an average value, device availability, max and min values, and other useful information.