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Connect Azure Data Explorer to the OPC UA reference solution

This article describes how to connect Azure Data Explorer to the OPC UA reference solution.

Azure Data Explorer is a fast, fully managed data analytics service for real-time analysis on large volumes of streaming data, such as the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) telemetry produced by this reference solution. Azure Data Explorer is purpose-built for time-series and log data, ingests millions of events per second with low latency, and lets you explore the data interactively by using Kusto Query Language (KQL). Built-in capabilities for time-series analysis, pattern recognition, anomaly detection, and forecasting make it ideal for industrial use cases such as condition monitoring, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) calculation, and predictive maintenance. Its native dashboards visualize the results without any extra tooling.

Architecture

The following diagram illustrates the OPC UA solution. It shows Azure Data Explorer as an analytics back end. It also shows Azure Databricks as an alternative analytics back end.

Architecture diagram of the OPC UA reference solution. Azure Databricks is shown as an optional alternative analytics back end.

Download a PowerPoint file of this architecture.

Automated deployment

Select Deploy to Azure to deploy all required resources to your Azure subscription:

Deploy to Azure

Note

The deployment can take up to 100 minutes to complete. After the deployment finishes, you can access the VM via SSH by using the credentials you provided during deployment.

Deploy a dashboard

You can deploy a sample dashboard. For more information, see To create new dashboard from a file. After you import the dashboard, update its data source. Specify the HTTPS endpoint of your Azure Data Explorer server cluster in the top-right corner of the dashboard. The HTTPS endpoint looks like this: https://<ADXInstanceName>.<AzureRegion>.kusto.windows.net/.

To display the OEE for a specific shift, select Custom Time Range in the Time Range list in the top-left corner of the Azure Data Explorer dashboard and enter the date and time for the start and end of the shift you're interested in.

The sample dashboard also includes a Unified NameSpace (UNS) / ISA-95 Graph tile that renders the Unified Namespace / ISA-95 asset hierarchy as an interactive node-link graph.

i3X API

An i3X API container app named <resourcesName>-i3x4kusto is deployed, exposing Azure Data Explorer over the i3X REST API. You can get its URL from the Azure portal. You can access the Swagger endpoint by adding /swagger to the URL.

The i3X API is protected with HTTP Basic authentication. All requests, including those from the Swagger Authorize dialog or an i3X client, must include the credentials you provided during deployment:

  • Username: the adminUsername you specified at deployment
  • Password: the adminPassword you specified at deployment

The health/capabilities endpoint (GET /v1/info) and the Swagger UI itself can be accessed without credentials. All data endpoints require the Basic authorization header (for example curl -u <adminUsername>:<adminPassword> https://<i3x-url>/v1/namespaces).

Run a query

Open your Azure Data Explorer database and select Queries. Because the telemetry Subject is the numeric DataSetWriterId, the station and production line are matched on the metadata DataSetName (built from the OPC UA server's ApplicationUri and NodeId) and then joined to the telemetry on Subject. Enter the following query in the text box, and then select Run:

let _startTime = ago(1h);
let _endTime = now();
opcua_metadata_lkv
| where DataSetName contains "assembly"
| where DataSetName contains "munich"
| join kind=inner (
    opcua_telemetry
    | where Name == "Status"
    | where Timestamp > _startTime and Timestamp < _endTime
) on Subject
|  extend status = toint(Value)
| project Timestamp1, status
| sort by Timestamp1 desc
| render linechart

Next steps

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