Operating Instructions
Chapter 3 – Setting Up the OPC Data Manager
20 Siemens Building Technologies, Inc.
5. In the Check OPC Servers section, do any of the following:
• Check OPC servers every—Type the number of minutes that should pass between the times
when the OPC Data Manager checks OPC servers.
• Attempt to restart dead OPC servers—Select this checkbox to make the OPC Data Manager
try to restart an OPC server that seems to have failed.
6. Do one of the following:
• To enter more settings, click another tab in the Data Manager Settings dialog box.
• To save the information and close the Data Manager Settings dialog box, click OK.
Entering Quality Settings
Through Quality settings, you can specify how incoming OPC quality values are translated into outgoing
values.
To enter Quality settings, do the following steps:
1. To open the Main Window, double-click
.
2. On the Manager menu, click Settings.
3. In the Data Manager Settings dialog box, click the Quality tab.
4. In the OPC Quality column, type a quality value that the OPC Data Manager receives from OPC
items.
5. In the Translation column, type the corresponding value that you want the OPC Data Manager to
send to other OPC items.
6. To specify a default suffix that will be applied to the IDs of OPC items that receive translated quality
values, type the characters in the Suffix field.
7. Do one of the following:
• To enter more settings, click another tab in the Data Manager Settings dialog box.
• To save the information and close the Data Manager Settings dialog box, click OK.
About Redundancy Operation
You can set up two OPC Data Managers as a primary/backup pair so if the primary fails, the backup takes
over. Each OPC Data Manager considers the other OPC Data Manager as its sibling—an identical copy
that can support all functionality.
Redundancy Signaling
Redundancy is implemented by having each OPC Data Manager send a signal, or heartbeat, to its
sibling. Its sibling monitors this heartbeat every second. If a user-defined period of time passes with no
heartbeat detected, an OPC Data Manager determines that its sibling has failed and takes appropriate
action. A primary OPC Data Manager keeps acting as a primary, while a backup OPC Data Manager will
ramp up to act as a full primary OPC Data Manager. When the heartbeat is again detected, a backup OPC
Data Manager returns to backup duty.