Augment/Replace Your SCADA System With a Time Series Database

Augment/Replace Your SCADA System With a Time Series Database | SPONSORED

Industrial control systems are changing, and data is becoming increasingly important to contemporary operations. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have long served as the foundation of industrial control—even though they have their limitations. These challenges include limited data storage, difficulty scaling, insufficient capability for advanced real-time data analytics, and many more.

These challenges faced by traditional SCADA systems have spurred the need for a much better alternative or augmentation to the traditional SCADA system. This is where InfluxDB, a time series database (TSDB), comes in. InfluxDB can supplement or even replace SCADA systems to improve performance and insights in an industry.

What Is a SCADA system?

A SCADA system consists of hardware and software components that work together to

• Gather data from industrial equipment, sensors, and devices
• Send controls to industrial equipment, devices, and processes

In other words, with the help of sensors, IoT devices, and other sources, the SCADA system takes data, provides real-time monitoring, and equips you with control capabilities like sending commands, controlling loops, alarm management, automation, and remote control, among others.

A typical SCADA system has software components such as the human-machine interface (HMI), SCADA server, and communication protocols. The hardware components will often consist of sensors and actuators, programmable logic controllers (PLGs), and remote terminal units (RTUs).

Traditional Use of SCADA Systems

Various industries use SCADA systems to provide control capabilities and monitoring. The roles SCADA systems play in these industries are highlighted below:

• Energy: In this industry, SCADA systems are commonly used in monitoring and managing power grids, electricity generation, transmission, and distribution.
• Manufacturing: SCADA systems are commonly used in the manufacturing industry for process control, quality control, and production monitoring.
• Transportation: SCADA systems are often used in the transportation industry for traffic management, rail, and air traffic control.

Limitations of SCADA Systems

Despite their numerous uses and applications in various industries, SCADA systems have their limitations.

• Data storage: SCADA systems have issues involving data storage capacity. This is because in the long-term use of the system for data storage, data increases. This can become a constriction when the relational database that’s typically used by this system runs out of storage.
• Real-time analytics: SCADA systems often rely on batch processing of data. This means that SCADA systems process data periodically, not immediately. This ultimately leads to delayed insights and reaction times.
• Scalability: Scaling SCADA systems becomes more difficult as you add more and more devices and data sources.
• Integration: Integrating SCADA systems into different platforms, like a dynamic data analytics and visualization tool, usually presents significant challenges.

Introduction to Time Series Databases and InfluxDB

A TSDB is a system software database that sorts and arranges data based on time. As the name implies, it collects data points at regular intervals and records them in time order. Typically, a TSDB will provide features like real-time analytics capabilities, scalability to handle large and increasing volumes of data, and efficient data storage and compression.

InfluxDB

InfluxDB is the leading TSDB for developers and organizations managing time series data. With InfluxDB, you can unlock real-time insights from time series data at any scale in any environment—in the cloud, on-premises, or at the edge. The architecture of InfluxDB allows you to monitor the metrics of your machines, sensors, and any other details that you need to increase productivity and maximize your resources. Under the hood, InfluxDB uses the FDAP stack, a group of open-source, Apache-backed technologies. This helps it to deliver real-time performance at scale, cost-optimized storage, and access to an open data ecosystem.

Features of InfluxDB

InfluxDB has numerous features that provide advantageous benefits to its users:

• High performance: InfluxDB speeds up your queries 100 times faster for high cardinality data and 45 times faster for recent data. It’s also designed to store large volumes of time series data and quickly perform real-time analysis on that data.
• Scalability: InfluxDB is highly scalable to manage more and more volumes of data records and demands from multiple sources.
• Integration: InfluxDB offers seamless integration with cloud platforms like AWS. Or maybe you monitor your Kubernetes with Grafana or deploy your applications via Docker. InfluxDB works with those, too. It’s also integrated with a vast list of high-level programming languages, such as Python, Kotlin, and JavaScript.
• Ease of use: InfluxDB has a lot of exciting and easy-to-use features to help you work more efficiently. It comes with a user-friendly interface for easy use by anyone.

InfluxDB is highly scalable to manage more and more volumes of data records and demands from multiple sources.

Benefits of Augmenting or Replacing SCADA With InfluxDB

Here are the benefits of augmenting or replacing your typical SCADA system with InfluxDB.

Enhanced Data Storage and Management

• Scalability: InfluxDB can handle large volumes of data from multiple sources. Traditional SCADA systems, on the other hand, struggle with limited data storage capacity.
• Efficiency: InfluxDB is more efficient for data storage and retrieval compared to traditional SCADA databases.

Real-Time Analytics and Monitoring

• Immediate insights: Unlike SCADA systems, which rely on batch processing of data to provide insights, InfluxDB provides real-time data processing for instant insights.
• Predictive maintenance: InfluxDB, by means of real-time data analytics and monitoring, can predict and prevent equipment failures, unlike traditional SCADA systems.

Improved Data Visualization

• Interactive dashboards: Using Grafana with InfluxDB, you can create a user-friendly dashboard for better data visualization.
• Customizable views: With InfluxDB, you can tailor data views to specific needs and preferences.

Integration With Modern Tools

• Compatibility: Unlike traditional SCADA systems, you can easily integrate InfluxDB with modern analytics and visualization tools.
• Flexibility: InfluxDB also gives you the functionality of using its APIs to connect with other systems and applications.

Cost-Effectiveness

• Lower cost: InfluxDB saves you money on data storage and processing.
• Resource optimization: By optimizing resource usage, InfluxDB helps you reduce operational costs and the need for additional hardware and maintenance.

How to Transition to InfluxDB

InfluxDB isn’t a 1:1 replacement for a SCADA system. InfluxDB works in concert with other tools and systems to mimic the SCADA workflow. InfluxDB also works with SCADA systems by complementing their abilities, particularly in data storage, analysis, and long-term monitoring.

Here are ways that you can transition from the traditional SCADA systems to InfluxDB.

1. Assess Your Needs

This is the first step to take in transitioning or augmenting your traditional SCADA system with InfluxDB. It’s crucial for you to identify the limitations of your current SCADA systems. This requires you to consider factors such as its data storage, processing, scalability requirements, real-time analytics, and visualization needs. This will help determine weather you’re augmenting or replacing your SCADA system.

2. Choosing InfluxDB

Before you choose a TSDB, there are key factors you need to consider. These include the TSDB’s performance and scalability, ease of use and integration, and cost-effectiveness. InfluxDB scores the highest in all these evaluation metrics. It has a high-performance and scalable architecture and a simple and intuitive API. It also supports various data sources and integrations.

3. Get Started

To get started with InfluxDB, contact sales for a proof of concept, or start now with InfluxDB Cloud to explore how InfluxDB can enhance your operations.

InfluxDB offers unlimited scale at a fraction of the cost, faster queries for high cardinality and recent data, a single datastore for all time series data, and many more features.

Conclusion

Traditional SCADA systems have always been the basis for industrial control from their applications in energy, transportation, and manufacturing. However, these systems face a lot of limitations in data storage, scalability, integration, and real-time analytics. To fix these issues, we need to replace or augment these traditional SCADA systems with more suitable TSDBs.

With the most popular TSDB, InfluxDB, you’re certain to get numerous benefits, including enhanced data storage, real-time analytics, improved visualization, seamless integration, and cost-effectiveness. InfluxDB offers unlimited scale at a fraction of the cost, faster queries for high cardinality and recent data, a single datastore for all time series data, and many more features. By leveraging InfluxDB, industries can unlock deeper insights, improve operational efficiency, and stay ahead in the data-driven world. Contact sales for a POC or sign up for InfluxDB Cloud now!