Alarm Historian Overview

Alarm Historian, previously named Hyper Alarm Logger™, is a robust alarm event logging system designed for efficient, scalable, and reliable data management. It offers persistent file-based storage of alarm events, ensuring that the logged data remains available for future analysis and retrieval by client applications such as Alarm Viewer. The system design manages complex industrial scenarios, ensuring reliable alarm logging, robust redundancy, and easy access to historical data.

The Alarm Historian system uses the following core components:

  • Collectors: Receive alarms from various sources.
  • Subscriptions: Link to specific alarm sources, such as OPC UA or BACnet alarms.
  • Collections: Group multiple subscriptions and define a common set of fields (columns) for logging.
  • Loggers: Log data from the collections into storage.

Key Features

The following table describes the key Alarm Historian features.

Feature

Description

Native integration with GENESIS components
  • Works seamlessly with other GENESIS components and features for HMI/SCADA visualization.
  • Can be used alongside GENESIS' reporting tools to generate reports based on alarm history and trends.

Redundancy and fault tolerance

The system provides a two-node redundancy where the active logger records alarms and events and synchronizes the data with the standby logger. This ensures continuous logging and prevents data loss during system failures or interruptions.

Real-time alarm logging
  • Continuously logs alarms and events as they occur, providing a reliable and consistent record of all system events.
  • Supports high-speed data logging, ensuring minimal latency between the occurrence of an alarm and its capture.
  • Stores alarms and events from a variety of sources supported by the FrameWorX™ infrastructure such as OPC AE, OPC UA, and BACnet. This wide-ranging compatibility ensures that the system integrates into diverse industrial setups.
  • Supports remote alarm collectors with store and forward feature to minimize data loss in case of network failures.

Historical data storage
  • Stores alarm data into separate SQLite-based storage files organized by time periods. This historical logging capability is vital for maintaining records for compliance purposes, audits, and long-term system analysis.
  • Uses loggers to manage the storage files, periodically create new storage files and handle archiving or deleting old files based on configurable conditions. Each logger maintains a persistent index of the stored files to manage the archived and live data effectively.

Client access

Clients can read the logged data using the FrameWorX API. Access is currently limited to historical alarm events.

Data export

The built-in data export allows transferring the alarm logs to external storage systems such as SQL Server or .csv files. The export mechanism is flexible, including options for manual and automatic synchronization based on time triggers.

Stand-alone collectors

The system also supports standalone collectors with store and forward feature, which are remote components that collect the alarm and events data. These collectors enhance the system's resilience by storing the data locally if the main system is down, which minimizes data loss.

Scalable and configurable logging

The logger allows configuration of multiple collections and subscriptions which represent the alarm sources. These collections define which data is logged and how. Additionally, the logger supports various file archiving options, including the option to delete old files or move them to archive directories.

Use Cases

The following table lists examples of Alarm Historian use in various industries.

Industry

Use

Manufacturing and Process Control

Monitoring equipment and process conditions for potential failures or inefficiencies.

Energy and Utilities

Tracking alarms in critical systems such as water treatment, power generation, or building automation.

Oil and Gas

Monitoring safety systems and equipment health in hazardous environments.

Pharmaceuticals

Ensuring adherence to stringent regulatory and safety standards by capturing alarm events in critical production environments.