Product Overview: Kepware KEPServerEX
KEPServerEX, developed by Kepware, is a leading industrial connectivity platform designed to provide a single, unified source of industrial automation data to various applications across an enterprise. This platform is instrumental in connecting, managing, monitoring, and controlling a diverse array of automation devices and software applications.
Key Functionality
- Unified Connectivity: KEPServerEX leverages industry-standard protocols such as OPC (Open Process Communication), as well as IT-centric protocols like SNMP, ODBC, and web services. This allows it to connect thousands of devices and data sources, including current and legacy devices, and integrate with various applications such as MES, SCADA, and IoT systems.
- Accessibility and Aggregation: The platform simplifies the configuration of connected applications by providing a single point of entry to all information. This eliminates the need for multiple disparate solutions, streamlining access to critical production data and facilitating smarter decision-making from the shop floor to the top floor.
- Scalability and Optimization: KEPServerEX offers on-demand scalability, allowing users to combine drivers and consume multiple protocols in a single server. It optimizes communications by aggregating identical requests from different applications, reducing network overhead and device processing. The platform also supports flexible control for customized load-balancing of data collection and information flow.
- Security: KEPServerEX includes advanced security features such as user management, access control, and secure data tunnels. It supports SSL and TLS for secure, authenticated, and encrypted communications. The platform also provides tools for defining redundant network paths and failover criteria to ensure high reliability and uptime in critical applications.
- Diagnostics and Troubleshooting: The platform is equipped with robust diagnostic tools, including OPC diagnostics that provide real-time and historical views of OPC events. This facilitates quick deployment and reduces downtime by enabling users to view actual communications and responses between OPC clients and the server.
Key Features
- Multi-Protocol Support: KEPServerEX supports a broad range of drivers and protocols, including OPC UA, classic OPC standards, MQTT, REST, and more. This ensures compatibility with a wide range of systems and devices.
- Redundancy and Failover: The platform allows users to define redundant network paths and failover criteria, ensuring high reliability and uptime in critical applications.
- Data Scaling and Processing: KEPServerEX can perform linear or square root scaling, basic arithmetic expressions, and deadband calculations on raw data, providing only the most critical updates and minimizing bandwidth and resource utilization.
- Historical Data Management: The platform can archive real-time data to local storage or any ODBC-compliant database using the Local Historian and DataLogger plug-ins. This enables access to historical data for future analysis.
- Secure OPC Tunneling: KEPServerEX offers a secure and reliable OPC tunneling solution that allows for easy remote communications through firewalls and across the internet, WAN, or LAN, using 256-bit AES message signing and encryption.
Benefits
- Improved Decision Making: By providing real-time and historical data access, KEPServerEX enables better decision-making across the enterprise.
- Enhanced Reliability: The platform’s redundancy options and failover capabilities ensure maximum uptime in critical applications.
- Simplified Management: The unified architecture and intuitive user interface simplify the configuration, maintenance, and troubleshooting of connected applications.
- Scalability: KEPServerEX is designed to scale with the needs of the enterprise, supporting a wide range of devices and applications.
In summary, KEPServerEX is a comprehensive industrial connectivity platform that integrates diverse automation devices and software applications, providing a single source of industrial automation data. Its robust features in connectivity, accessibility, aggregation, optimization, security, and diagnostics make it an essential tool for modern industrial enterprises.