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Plant dash board using MII with PCo link down

Former Member
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Hi Steve

I am working on a project "Plant dash board using MII" and also various other things integrated with SAP MII such as:

1. At the time of good entry vehicle weigh bridge & security cameras integrated with SAP.

2. Biometric attendance system integrated with SAP.

3. Shop floor machine PLC are integrated with SAP though OPC kepware to view real time status of shop floor.

My major concern is SAP PCo agent link goes down automatically down and both OPC and MII stops communicating with each other. I have checked the license it is perfectly fine and both m/c are pinging with each other. Please tell me what could be the possible reason.

Regads

Vivek

[Discussion was branched from old Discussion in 2012]

Message was edited by: Michael Appleby

Accepted Solutions (0)

Answers (2)

Answers (2)

hasila_amjath
Explorer
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Dear Mr setve,

the error we are getting in the event log is " Error while establishing connection : Could not open UA TCP request channel"

when the agents are down..

same problem which vivek has mentioned.

regards

hasila

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Hasila,

What about the OPC Server? This error is very explicit; there is a break in the connection between Agent Instance and the OPC Server. Please confirm that the OPC Server is operating correctly.

Did you apply the version and patch updates to PCo and the OPC Server as recommended?

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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Hi steve

Last time we changed the OPC retry counts settings as you suggested. There after it worked perfectly fine for more than 2-3 months. Now again we are in trouble. This time OPC & MII Connection is okay but OPC is returning status bad for the tags despite of OPC quick client showing status good of PLC and real time values are updating in it.

What could be the problem.

Please Help... Thanks....

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

  1. Does the OPC Tag status change if you restart the agent Instance?
  2. Are there any errors in the Kepware Logs?
  3. Are there any errors in the PCo Logs?
  4. Have you patched PCo to the latest SP and Patch, your version is very old.

Note that QuickClient uses OPC DA connectivity to Kepware but you are using OPC UA between PCo and Kepware, according to the previous messages.   BAD tag status could still be a connection issue between PCo and Kepware over UA.

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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HI Steve

1. OPC tags status is always good for machines which are running, off course status is bad for few machines which are under shutdown. The PLC's are not communicating as their power is off.

2. In kepware error message comes when machine is under shut down as at that time PLC is also Off. Message is like this

"9/11/2015   10:05:45 AM Warning      Siemens TCP/IP Ethernet              Device 'Acid Filler-2.PLC1214' with ID 10.10.75.13 is not responding."

3. PCo is not generating any logs giving error

4.No I haven't. Please provide link, where i can get latest Service Pack, procedure to patch details etc.

With warm regards

Vivek M

Former Member
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Image is inserted for your ready reference.

Thanks once again.

Regards

Vivek

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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HI Vivek,

  1. You need to delete the Agent Instance Logs as the logs size has been exceeded.  this is most likely due to a large number of connection errors when the PLC's are shut down.
  2. What are the current settings for the Retry Interval and Max No of Retrys for the OPC UA Agent?
  3. What is the Log Level Setting for each of the Agent Instances? 
  4. You can get the latest PCo SP from http://support.sap.com -> Download Software -> Support Packages and Patches ->A-Z Index -> P -> Plant Connectivity.

What is a normal or expected time that a machine can be down and not available for communication? 

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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Hi steve

I could extract the fresh error logs after deleting the entire logs. Forwarding the same for your ready reference. Meanwhile working on updating the PCo with latest SP.

Regards

Vivek

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

The error is being returned from Kepware to PCo, apparently after the PLC is disconnected from Kepware.

You also have an old version of Kepware, recommend you update that as well after applying the PCo upgrade, then retest.

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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Hi Steve..

How are you doing?

The latest logs i have seen and found an hex code of server error, description of the same is as:

Date        Time         Level        Source                               Event

9/18/2015   10:32:41 AM Error        UA Server                            Error: Registration with Discovery Server failed [ret=0x80af0000]


Please suggest what could be the problem..


With warm regards


Vivek

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

Can you provide screen shots of your PCo OPC UA Source agent configuration?

One thing we cannot prevent is receiving BAD quality when MII is trying to query a tag that was previously Good before the PLC was shut down. This is normal behavior for an OPC Server communicating with an OPC Client.  You can detect the status of a Kepware channel or device from the _System group tags defined by Kepware, and these could be used to define some conditions on when you process tag data.

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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Hi Steve

Please have a look.

Regards

Vivek

Former Member
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In continuation to trailing message...

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

I do not see any obvious issues with your configuration. In order to have this issue reviewed in more detail you will need to log a support ticket against MFG-PCO, and provide the documentation that you have provided here.

Regards, Steve

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

First, some questions:

  1. current version and patch of PCo and MII
  2. current version of Kepware
  3. is Kepware fully licensed?
  4. Are PCo and Kepware installed on the same server?
  5. Please detail the conditions and events around the statement "SAP PCo agent link goes down automatically".

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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Hi Steve

First of all thank you for your prompt response.

I am answering to your queries,

1.PCo version is 2.303.1737.352

MII version-"sap mii Copyright 2009 SAP AG. All Rights Reserved. 14.0.3 build(29)".

2.Kepware Server version: v5.13.191.0

3.We haven't purchased license for data logger but for OPC communication server and PCo it is there.

4.Yes both servers are on different machines.

5.Machines are running on the shop floor, status is also updating on webportal, but some time in the day it stop fetching the data and when we tried to reconnect. A message displayed"OPC Server" not reachable. Than we checked in PCo Management console against PCo agent a X (Cross mark appear in front of PCo agent name instead of green bullet,sign of healthy status). Then we restart the PCo manually in window srever using services.msc and thereafter everything start working fine.

This is going to effect the quality of reports we are getting in our dashboard, and putting serious threat on authenticity of reports.As the time for which the servers are not communicating with each other at that time there is lapse in data. And there is difference between actual figures and system generated one.

Regards

Vivek M

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

  1. The "OPC Server not reachable" is most likely due to either a network issue, or the OPC Server has stopped due to the DataLogger not being licensed; You need to review the Reliable Connection settings for the PCo OPC DA agents. The default is 3 retries and 30 seconds delay per retry. After the retry count is exceeded, the PCo agent goes into Faulted state (red X) and will require a restart to recover; Also need to make sure the OPC Server is running as well and not timed out due to license restriction.
  2. Please provide an export of a PCo Agent Instance log containing the log message at the time the agent instance lost connection with the OPC server and eventually faulted.
  3. I would strongly recommend you disable the Kepware DataLogger plugin if you do not have it licensed. This could also impact the OPC connectivity as well; which would cause the "OPC Server not reachable" errors.
  4. Your PCo and MII, as well as Kepware, are pretty old. Recommend that you consider an upgrade to the latest versions of all products.

Regards, Steve

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Steve

I gave a continuous ping command between these two machines and i didn't see any break so we can rule out networking problem option. Secondly as you said reliable connection setting are same as by default settings,"3retries with 30 sec delay".

I am trying to extract Instance Log but a pop up message is coming " Can not query agent log [there is insufficient disk space to complete the action]".What could be the reason for this as there is ample space on server.

Please tell me more about how to disable kepware data logger plugins.

Regards

Vivek M

former_member196557
Active Contributor
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Hi Vivek,

  1. Delete the PCo log for the agent instance and wait for the next issue to export.
  2. Please update PCo to at least the most recent SP and patch for version 2.3.
  3. To disable the data logger plugin, you have to delete the datalogger configuration. First make a separate backup of the Kepware project so you will have a copy to restore if you need the datalogger in the future, or decide to license it. After removing the configuration you will have to stop/restart the Kepware runtime service.
  4. Increase the Retry Counts in Reliable Mesaging to at least 1000. This will reduce the chance that the agent instance will enter Faulted state due to Retry Count exceeded. However, if the network or OPC server are unavailable, you will obviously not be able to query data through the OPC server.
  5. You can set up remote monitoring for PCo, including a way to automatically restart failed agents. Please see this SCN article.  https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-61178.

Regards, Steve

Former Member
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Hi Steve

Greetings for the day!!!

As you mentioned i changed the retry counts to 100000 still same problem.

Please help.

Regards

Vivek M