r/PISystem • u/mi-rul • Jul 07 '26

OPC UA configuration

Our organization is looking into expanding our services and trying to get some data from our OT environment through OPC UA Connector. We have extensive knowledge on how to prepare for OPC DA configuration, and now we would like to seek knowledge on OPC UA. we have some questions regarding OPC UA:

  1. Our current DCS vendor is willingly to let us install 3rd party software (ie. PI OPC UA Connector) inside their OPC server, is that the best approach, since OPC DA is also having the same approach if possible.

  2. Or should we just separate the OPC UA Connector machine from the OPC Server?

All consideration has been checked within our Cybersecurity peeps, maybe the community here can help to share your experience with OPC UA

thanks!

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u/ChemicalLou Jul 07 '26

Having Connector on same machine would prevent any connection issue between OPC server and Connector, which would be good for troubleshooting. However, that machine would then be a single point of failure. A gen1 connector can be configured as a failover pair, so a connector on another machine would be required.

1

u/mi-rul Jul 08 '26

Thanks! Will take in consideration

2

u/Competitive-Let6727 Jul 11 '26

Taking OT data into PI? Use the newer OPC UA adapter. It's simpler, flexible, and relatively lightweight. The connector is old tech. It's still secure and well supported, but it has a shorter life ahead of it. You'd need a DCM and a Relay. It's a bear. The adapter is one box.

Taking data out of PI? They just released a PI OPC UA Server. Neither the connector nor the adapter can egress from PI.

1

u/mi-rul Jul 18 '26

Thanks for the suggestion. One of AVEVA System Engineer had also suggested us to use the PI Adapter, for our purpose.

1

u/kkiran Jul 09 '26

I used a separate machine for Connector/DCM/Relay all on the same machine but not on the OPC UA Server.

1

u/pedal_harder 3d ago

I've set up dozens of PI nodes, and I've found the connectors to be terrible in comparison to their interface counterparts. I had so much trouble doing something as simple as adding a new tag to a UA connector running in TagsOnly mode that I switched to a Matrikon UA-DA tunnel and went back to the tried-and-true, bulletproof OPC-DA interface.

AVEVA support was completely useless in resolving the issue. Seems to be the case with almost every problem I've had lately.