5 layers inside industrial network segmentation

 Taken from Lanner.. 

Det-Tronics Eagle Quantum Premier on Solar Turbines Centaur 50 Gas Turbine Package

Even though this unit has no SIL rating.. It has been running 24/7 since 2014.. No failures.. Excellent quality product.. 

Experimenting with OPC Tunneller and Firewall Settings -- OPC Expert + Graybox OPC DA Simulator

 Objective #1 = To understand behavior of OPC Tunneller with respect to packet transfer and how they behave with Windows Firewall (or any firewall for that matter) turned ON.

Objective #2 = To appreciate how easy to do OPC DA tunnelling with OPC Expert software.

Objective #3 = To refresh myself with Wireshark network packet sniffing software.

1. The setup for today is via 2 VMs -- both equally the same. Clone of Windows 7. 

2. Pls note that i chose network settings as Host-only Adapter in my Virtualbox bcoz i want all my VMs to be able to talk to each other. Image below taken from Nakivo.

3. Next i fired up 2 VMs -- VM03 and VM04 -- VM03 is loaded with OPC DA Server simulator. My favorite is Graybox OPC.

4. Based on guideline from OPC Expert website -- i was able to tunnel OPC data smoothly within 10 minutes -- i could not believe how simple it is -- compared to previous Tunnelling software i have used (Matrikon OPC Tunneller and Cogent Datahub) 

5. Next step -- let's analyze what ports are being used by OPC Expert to obtain data from VM03. I launched Wireshark and start sniffing... so i found that if i want to use OPC Expert to tunnel OPC data -- i would need two (2) TCP ports to be opened.

a) TCP 57888 -- this is for source tunnel

b) TCP 49194 -- this is for destination tunnel

Mission accomplished !!

Where to download Citect SCADA 2015 SP1

 At GDC -- we have Citect SCADA 2015 running on Windows 7.

Due to cybersecurity requirement, the O/S ought to be upgraded to Windows 10.

After reading through compatibility matrix - i learnt that Citect SCADA 2015 must be upgraded to SP1 in order for it to be supported in Windows 10.

I then managed to register myself in AVEVA software portal -- then able to download SP1 installer.

Not only that -- i found there are patches (bug fixes) as well.

Good job AVEVA -- for making it transparent to user.

How to check the version of Allen Bradley PLC *.ACD Software Version without using RSLogix 5000

 Ok.. here is my situation.. 

I need to know the project database backup file version (ACD file) of my Allen Bradley PLC..

Reason is.. if you want to open it using RSLogix5000 or now called Studio 5000.. you need to know what version of your PLC file.. 

Since i only have the *.ACD file - what i did was.. try open via Notepad..

It will show up as below..

In below example... the PLC database version is v20.01.00

View and Edit Text File from Command Line in Ubuntu Linux 18.04 Server

 Via terminal.. use these 2 commands.. quite easy and straight forward to edit your text files..

CAT and NANO

example usage..

CAT /etc/home/dindon/yourfilename.txt

NANO /etc/home/dindon/yourfilename.txt

Different is.. 

CAT = to view only

NANO = to view and edit.. 

Calculate Natural Gas Compressibility Factor (Z) using Gas Composition Value

This time.. i have to do some analysis to see how much is the impact of natural gas composition towards Compressibility Factor (Z value)..

You see.. not every company can invest on Gas Chromatography (GC).. (expensive to own and maintain)..

So.. in our plant.. the natural gas is only corrected to actual Pressure and Temperature.. the Z-correction cannot be done due to unavailability of GC machine..

So i found this free software which is very coool.

You key-in gas compo - and it will calculate for you the Z-Value..

 

A better (and free) OPC Historical Data Access (HDA) Test Client - Advosol HDA Client

I'm glad to share that i found a new tool which is a lot slicker and nicer to work with.

All this while - i always use MatrikonOPC HDA Explorer which is buggy and looks like a half cooked software.

Kudos to Advosol. 

I like it very much. 

https://www.advosol.com/topic/downloadFreeTools

Step by Step to add OPC Data from Kepware Kepserver to Canary Historian

ok guys..
pls be careful..
i learnt this the hard way..
it is easy to add OPC tags into Canary Historian..
but pls follow the step by steps carefully.

1. Setup your OPC DA Server. In my case i used Kepware KEPServerEx. It is one of my favorite OPC Server due to its reliability and its technical support is strong. 
2. After i setup OPC DA Server - i tested its functionality by browsing OPC data via Matrikon OPC Explorer or any other similar tools.
3. Now your OPC data is verified.
4. Move on to Canary.
5. Setup your Canary Logger - imagine this is a Canary "collecting" agent. Similar to OSIsoft PI Node. Canary Logger can be installed on the same PC as OPC Server or on another PC. In my case, i installed on the same PC. To make it easier for OPC COM/DCOM issues.
6. So this is the step i missed out.
7. Before configuring Canary Logger - i missed to create a "Data Set" at Canary Administrator. A Data Set is like a "folder" for new data to come in. In Canary, u can creates multiple Data Sets or this folders so that u can segregate incoming data. This is super cool features.
8. I also learnt - in Canary you must put Data Set as your prefix of your tag name. Else you will get error messages.

In this photo - u can see my Data Set is named "Kepware_Data" - so any data incoming from my Kepware KEPServerEx OPC Server is grouped into this DS.

This is shot from Canary Logger - i also learnt that your tag name must have Data Set in front of it !!!
Eg. _.PV
if you dont put DS as a prefix - data wont flow in