Slow / Delayed Alarms
- Terrance Ferguson
Consider that the application could be older and has just been continually had things Added On to it without much thought of Optimization.
If this is a Large system with multiple Client nodes , you may have reached the system size in which Default settings do not work.
iFix's default behavior is to send everything to everybody all the time.
Consider the Scope of this is specific to the Network bandwidth + the Number of Clients + the Graphic that is open on each Client.
The PC Clock time on the Clients machines and the SCADA should be synchronized to the Same time.
If you need to change the Clock, make sure you restart the Node.
The alarms are mixed with the messaging back and forth between the SCADA and the Client includes Alarms and the Data that the Client is requesting.
For example: If the Client has a Graphic Screen Open with 500 animated links and the links are set at 0.1 seconds, the SCADA is sending the Data 10 times a second.
If the SCADA is also flooded with lots of Alarms and events , everything begins to slow down.
At the Client, run ALMSTAT and look at the amount of Alarms & Events that are being Sent to the Client.
Note: Data Sent is different from a Filter at the Alarm Summary Object. That Filter is after the Client has received.
The Filter is what is read from the Alarm Queues.
See this PDF for Almstat.
https://digitalsupport.ge.com/s/article/Using-ALMSTAT-Diagnostic-Utility?language=en_US
Run Almhist and see what is coming into the Node.
A common issue is disconnected / offline devices constantly throwing communication faults.
in the SCU under Task Configuration you can add C to the command line to to supress communication faults.
See this Tech note. The command line is at the end of the note.
https://automatech.app.box.com/s/0rg97ysf39lpi08dfifkrmb3dzrukex7
At the SCADA, if you run Netdiag and select the NNT tab, you will see the connection order that the Clients connected to the SCADA.
Each time an alarm occurs, it sends the Alarm to clients in the order they connected.
The message is sent , then the client answers that it received the message an it goes down the list.
If they you have configured "Fake" iFix Reduncy and do not actually have actual Failover SCADAs configured ,
Then you are also Duplicating the alarms. Each SCADA is acting as an independant SCADA and is sending out its own Alarm to each Client.
If they have interconnected the SCADAs, ( List the other SCADAs as Remote nodes in the SCADA SCUs ) , then all alarms from the other SCADAs are sent to the "Client" SCADA.
The graphics can have their Animation rates slowed to 0.5 or 1 second updates rates.
This helps cut the network loading on the SCADAs. See the refresh rate tool in the Picture Toolbox.
See documentation about Network Loading.
You can configure the SCADA to only send Specific Alarms to Specific Client nodes.
If the Clients have specific duties , then you can have the SCADA only send alarms that matter to that Node / Operator.
See this about Configuring the SCADA to only send specific information to Clients. The Filteralm.ini file
Understanding Alarm Transfer https://www.ge.com/digital/documentation/ifix/version2022/index.html#environment-setup/env_understanding_alarm_transfer.htm
AutomaTech Inc.