0:28
Hello, good morning. Welcome to today’s webinar. Today the topic is on OCS360, our new cloud data visualization software.
0:41
The presentation will be about 12 minutes long and we’re going to cover how the data flows from the machine to the cloud, how the platform keeps that data secure and how you can access and use the data.
0:54
If you have any questions during the presentation, please enter them into the questions panel and we’ll get to those at the end.
1:02
Thanks very much. Let’s get going.
1:05
Hello and welcome to today’s webinar. Today we will have a look at how OCS360 works.
1:12
Let’s look at our agenda for today.
1:15
We are going to start out with a very quick review of OCS360 and then we will answer questions such as what does the architecture look like?
1:24
Is the OCS to cloud connection secure? What about your data? Is it secure?
1:30
What about MQTT? And then we will finish with the Q &A session.
1:35
Let’s do a quick review of OCS 360. OCS 360 is a new cloud service from Horner Automation.
1:43
It is designed to make it as easy as possible for you to send data from your OCS controller in the field up to OCS360 cloud.
1:52
What can you do with the data once it is in the cloud?
1:55
You can create dashboards so you can see in real time what is happening with your applications.
2:00
Also, you can do remote alarm initiation and other notifications.
2:05
So if something happens in the field, you’ll be notified via email or SMS.
2:10
And you can build your dashboards so you can get a view of what’s going on everywhere in your application.
2:15
The way that OCS sends data to the OCS 360 cloud is a little different than your traditional requests and reply protocols like ModBoss, TCP.
2:26
OCS 360 uses a special version of MQTT to publish data to the OCS 360 broker where it is then logged and recorded for your future use.
2:37
Now what do you need for OCS 360?
2:40
Well you need the very latest version of Seascape, which is seascape 10.1 not a service pack one but seascape 10.1 which is available for download from the Horner website and you need either a canvas controller or a prime controller loaded with the latest firmware version 17.1 and then you will need an internet style connection with your controller so that it can reach the OCS 360 cloud.
3:09
Now let’s take a look at the OCS 360 architecture.
3:12
Let’s start by focusing on the main application servers, one of those light-colored boxes there in the center of the blue AWS section. So what do the main application servers do?
3:25
Well that is where the main OCS 360 applications runs and this is where the OCS will be pushing data from the field and that is also where you’ll be accessing data from your OCS 360 application. So the data will come into the main application service.
3:42
What about storage?
3:44
When you’ve set up your OCS 360 you add devices, for example OCS’s in the field.
3:50
You will build things like dashboards and set up alarms and so your main application is actually stored in an application database that you can see in another light-colored box connected to the main application servers. That is the application you set up from your OCS360 web browser.
4:08
All that is stored in the application database and it is put there by the main application server.
4:14
What about the data itself that the OCS is in the field?
4:18
Push the OCS360, they are also received by the main application servers and then they are stored away in the different database, a customer database and we will cover that in more detail here in a little it. Also happening within the blue box here in the center is a certificate and billing server.
4:37
So that is a separate application, a separate server which handles all the security certificates.
4:43
We also have an AWS load balancer which we will talk about its functions here in a bit and also at the top here you can see cloud share and cloud watch. What is that?
4:54
Well we will talk about that bit as well.
4:58
Now in addition to storing your application and storing your data in those database, there are also other functionality within OCS 360 that is linked to third-party service.
5:09
An email on an alarm condition, the OCS 360 service utilizes a third-party email service to actually send those emails.
5:18
Now none of the sensitive information is stored externally.
5:21
That is all stored locally, but when an email needs to be generated, the main application for OCS360 sends those details for that one email transaction to the email service, and the email is generated now.
5:36
Similarly, if you would like to generate an SMS or text message, that functionality is also available and it works basically the same way as the main OCS360 application sends information from a particular SMS text message transaction to an SMS service and then that is generated.
5:54
Now let’s bring our attention to the area on the left where you have got your OCS 360 web application.
6:01
That is where you log into OCS 360, you create your account and then once you have got your account created you add devices, you add dashboards and all those sorts of functions.
6:13
Add alarm capability. All that is done from the OCS360 web application.
6:19
Now when you first login to OCS360 you have got a two-factor authentication and you also have got a firewall to make sure that you are not a bot but an actual human being.
6:31
And then once you are in your data it will flow into main OCS application hosted by AWS and then you have got your OCS controllers in the there are also communications OCS 360 and what they are doing is they are pushing variable data that you have designated to be sent to the OCS 360 cloud and they are pushing that data through MQTT.
6:54
This is the look of the main architecture of the OCS 360.
6:58
Now let’s take a look at all the ways we have made OCS 360 communication secure.
7:03
You start out in your web application by an OCS and activating it.
7:08
The certificate server automatically generates two SSL certificates, one which is sent to the application server and the other which is retrieved by the OCS after its application has been downloaded.
7:20
Then when the OCS starts sending data to the main application server it presents its SSL certificate and if it matches the one that was previously sent by the certificate server then everything is good and secure communication occurs with MQTT data being sent from the field by OCS and secure communication being possible over HTTPS between OCS 360 web application and the main application server.
7:49
So hopefully you can see how we have made communications secure with OCS 360.
7:54
Now we have seen how OCS connectivity works let’s cover another element of what we just saw in the animation.
8:00
So one of the advantages of OCS360 is the way that it handles SSL certificates.
8:07
Now you can use SSL certificates with a variety of other communication schemes, including MQTT sparkplug if you are connecting to an industrial standard application from another manufacturer.
8:20
However, there is a lot of work involved in dealing with those SSL certificates.
8:25
They have been generated and downloaded and you are responsible for all that handling.
8:30
The advantage with OCS 360 and its certificate handling is the fact that it’s fully automatic so there is no setup required and the certificate files are never exposed to the outside world so you do not have to deal with them.
8:43
Setting up SSL certificates is a task that you will not have to mess with and it will be handled automatically and securely.
8:51
Now let’s take a look at our customer cloud data and we will take a look at different ways that it is secured.
8:58
So first of all as we discussed earlier all data that is pushed from the OCS controllers to the OCS 360 cloud is stored in the customer data database and that entire path of the OCS into the load balancer into the main application and then into the customer data database is all fully encrypted using the latest versions of TLS.
9:20
Also the connection is read where between the main application servers and the customer database so that is another way that it is secured.
9:28
Also a little more details on the customer data database. It is called the 4nod database.
9:34
That design means that the database is designed for both fast access and redundancy.
9:40
Both of those are very important.
9:42
The redundancy helps ensure the security of the data and the reliability of your data and then that the fast access gives you great response when you’re actually using OCS 360 and accessing data from the dashboard for instance.
9:56
Now let’s take a look at the reliability.
9:58
So let’s take a look again inside the OCS 360 application in different ways that we have made it reliable.
10:04
First of all at the top here we have what is called cloud share and cloud watch.
10:09
So these are tools that are continuously monitoring the system and anytime there is any sort of irregularity maybe the resources that are in by the main application servers because suddenly a sudden gain that is an irregularity and they will be notified anytime anything like this happens.
10:27
So the cloud share and cloud watch is keeping an eye on things at all times and sending out notifications when anything unusual happens next.
10:35
The next thing that helps keep things reliable is something called AWS load balancer.
10:41
So all the traffic comes into the application through the load balancer and the function of AWS load bands to distribute the incoming traffic appropriately, depending on what the traffic is, so that is another way to keep things reliable.
10:55
Also the main application servers are redundant, so it is not just one server there, if there is any problem with that server for some reason, we need to go into the backup server, that backup server will be online and running in a nature of 15 minutes or so, that minimises downtime.
11:12
Now let’s talk about MQTT and we are going to compare the MQTT that is in use by the OCS360 versus the variation of MQTT that is being used by Sparkplug which is the leading industrial variation of MQTT in use today and also supported by OCS.
11:31
So the OCS supports both OCS360’s version of MQTT and the Sparkplug version of MQTT and we are going to compare these two starting with Sparkplug.
11:42
The whole goal of the Sparkplug is to provide an MQTT connection between edge devices from multiple manufacturers and the cloud or the local server.
11:51
The whole idea is to support that connection between multiple manufacturers of edge devices and multiple manufacturers of servicers and software and software cloud type software services and Sparkplug is designed for industrial environment which is very important.
12:08
The Horner OCS product do support MQTT spark plug specifically prime and canvas but it does require a fair amount of setup.
12:17
We are going to be signing a third-party server communicating with third-party devices so that means we need to pass a lot of information to the configuration so that can all work properly.
12:28
Now let’s contract that with MQTT for OCS 360.
12:33
It is designed to provide a connection between OCS controller and the OCS 360 cloud in the industrial environments period.
12:41
They are no third-party devices we need to communicate with.
12:44
It is a Horner controller talking to a Horner cloud, that means the setup for that connection is nearly automatic.
12:51
There certainly are not any details in terms of the web addresses or certificates or any of those sorts of things that are required. It is automatic.
13:00
You check check marks in your program variable table and then those variables are just automatically added to your default OCS360 group that is produced. That concludes our webinar for today.
13:12
Thank you so much for listening and the Q &A session will begin shortly.
13:21
Okay thank you all so much for your attention during the presentation.
13:25
At the moment we don’t have any questions in so I hope that that covered everything for you for the moment but you do have a moment so if you have anything you’d like to ask please enter it now.
13:38
I’ll just share my screen to show you what’s coming up in our webinar series.
13:44
So this is our webinar page on our website and as you can see for the next few weeks and all through September we’re going to be covering some more areas in OCS 360 so we have a lot more information to share with you about the product.
13:59
Next week we’ll be covering dashboard development in OCS 360 and it’s at the same time as usual.
14:06
So you can register here on the website if you want to take part in that and also just below here we have all of our past webinars so you can catch up on anything you missed like last week we also had an OCS 360 session just about getting started with the platform.
14:26
Okay so I think that’s everything for today if you If you think of anything, any question in the meantime, please submit those to technical support here on technical.support at Horner-APG.com and we’d be happy to assist you.
14:44Thanks very much for your attention this morning. We hope to see you again next week.