About Collectors
A collector collects tag data from various data sources.
How tag data is stored when TLS encryption is not used:
- Collectors send a request to AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) to write tag data.
- NLB sends the request to Data Archiver. If user authentication is needed, Data Archiver sends the request to UAA, which verifies the user credentials stored in PostgreSQL. After authentication, NLB confirms to the collectors that data can be sent.
- Data collected by the collector instances is sent to NLB.
- NLB sends the data to Data Archiver directly. After authentication, Data Archiver stores the data in EFS in .iha files.
- Collectors send a request to AWS NLB to write tag data. Since the request is encrypted, port 443 is used.
- NLB decrypts the request and sends it to Data Archiver. If user authentication is needed, Data Archiver sends the request to UAA, which verifies the user credentials stored in PostgreSQL. After authentication, NLB confirms to the collectors that data can be sent.
- Data collected by the collector instances is encrypted and sent to NLB using port 443.
- NLB decrypts the data and sends it to Data Archiver. After authentication, Data Archiver stores the data in EFS in .iha files.
- Clients (that is, Excel Addin, the Web Admin console, the REST Query service, or Historian Administrator) send a request to NLB to retrieve data.
- NLB sends the request to Data Archiver, which retrieves data from EFS. If, however, user authentication is needed, Data Archiver sends the request to UAA, which verifies the user credentials stored in PostgreSQL. After authentication, data is retrieved from EFS.
To send data using a collector, you must:
- Install collectors.
You can install collectors on multiple Windows machines. These machines can be on-premises or on a virtual private cloud (VPC).
- Create a collector instance.