Hi, Does anyone have any experience with DeltaV Zone Servers? We have 3 DeltaV Systems connected together via zone servers but we are currently unable to pull process history data or alarms and events data from the zones. The Emersons product data sheets for Zone Servers state you can 'View continuous historian data in other zones' and 'View event data gathered from plant areas in multiple zones' but we are unable to implement this functionality.
Any time I see these types of question, I have to first start by recommending you speak with your local Emerson service provider as there are many facets to this type of question, and a forum like this invites many well meaning contributors that collectively can get you into trouble. Having someone own this problem to bring focus will get you to a solution much faster. Being one of those well meaning contributors :-), I will add this. Pulling history data from other Zones is done on a separate network than the Zone Network. The Zone Servers provide runtime data connectivity between the Zones, allowing displays and controllers in one zone to read or write to data in modules located in an other zone. The PHV client application allows you to specify Continuous History and Event Journal hosts by name. The Continuous History server can even be a PI Enterprise server. To connect to a server in another zone, the Operator Station needs to be able to communicate with the Historian over a separate network that connects it to the server. There are two challenges to overcome. First, you must configure the Chart using the history tag used in the server, without the Zone prefix. You cannot browse as the PHV client will only browse the local DeltaV system. If you create a chart from the other zone and save it, you can copy that chart to other zones and when these are connected to the right historian, they will show the data. So the work around is to configure charts for data in their host zone, and copy these to the Pro Plus of other zones, and then download them to the operator stations. For launching PHV from the Faceplate window in Operate, the Zone% prefix allows the CHART to display the runtime data in the trend, but the CHART does not know where to find the history data for this module, and so you do not get history for module based preconfigured CHARTS. If you were to pass the module name with out the prefix, and point the PHV CHART to the right Historian, you would be able to see the history, but without the zone prefix, the CHART would not be able to update runtime. By refreshing the remote history chart manually, you would have a usable workaround. Or you could provide the operator with a choice to show runtime or history. The second challenge, and I don't know how this would be solved, is that the PHV client needs to have Windows security access to the history server. I'm not sure how the connection is done for data retrieval, so if some one can speak to that, it would be appreciated. Since each DeltaV Zone is a separate domain, or a workgroup, users in one domain accessing a server in another domain may have to setup trusts or user accounts. If the Zones were installed in a forest under a parent domain, setting up the trusts would be relatively easy, versus having workgroups and copying user accounts and passwords. Assuming the security aspect of the connection is solved, then in PHV you add the remote zone history servers to the list, allowing Charts to connect. So integrating the PHV Charts with DeltaV Operate for remote history servers is doable, but it is not out of the box and there are some compromises to make along the way. Good luck.
Andre Dicaire
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