Unified data ingestion adapter for migration of industrial data to a cloud platform

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9866635-B2
Application number	US-201514619933-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 11, 2015
Priority date	Mar 26, 2014
Publication date	Jan 9, 2018
Grant date	Jan 9, 2018

Abstract

A cloud gateway device facilitates collection of industrial data from one or more data sources on the plant floor and migration of the collected data to a cloud platform for storage and processing. The cloud gateway device collects historical, live, and/or alarm data directly from industrial devices networked to the gateway device, formats and encapsulates the data with customer-specific header information, and sends the resulting data packets to a cloud platform for processing by cloud-level analytics services. To keep local memory requirements low, the cloud gateway device supports store-and-forward functionality in the event of a communication loss to the cloud platform, whereby the collected industrial data is redirected to an external data storage repository until communication to the cloud platform is reestablished.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A cloud gateway device, comprising:
a memory that stores executable components;
a processor, operatively coupled to the memory, that executes the executable components, the executable components comprising:
an application interface component configured to receive industrial data from an industrial controller;
a formatting component configured to convert the industrial data to a common format to yield formatted data;
a transmission adapter component configured to encapsulate the formatted data with header information to yield a data packet and to send the data packet to a cloud platform over a communication channel;
a registration component configured to send gateway registration information for the cloud gateway device to a registration server device, wherein the gateway registration information comprises at least identification information for the cloud gateway device and an indication of a number of industrial data points being collected by the cloud gateway device, and the registration server device stores identity information and status information for data repository devices connected to a same network as the cloud gateway device; and
a redirect component configured to, in response to a determination that the communication channel has become unavailable,
send a query to the registration server device requesting an identity of a data repository device of the data repository devices,
receive, from the registration server device, the identity of the data repository device selected by the registration server device based on the number of industrial data points and the status information for the data repository devices, and
send the formatted data to the data repository based on the identity of the data repository.

2. The cloud gateway device of claim 1 , wherein the redirect component is configured to send the formatted data to the data repository device in response to the determination that the communication channel has become unavailable and a determination that a store-and-forward criterion has been satisfied.

3. The cloud gateway device of claim 2 , wherein the determination that the store-and-forward criterion has been satisfied comprises a determination that a defined percentage of local storage capacity of the cloud gateway device has been consumed.

4. The cloud gateway device of claim 1 , wherein the executable components further comprise a registration component configured to send identification information for the cloud gateway device to the registration server device.

5. The cloud gateway device of claim 1 , wherein the redirect component is further configured to, in response to a determination that the communication channel has been reestablished, retrieve the formatted data from the data repository device and provide the formatted data retrieved from the data repository device to the transmission adapter component.

6. The cloud gateway device of claim 5 , wherein the transmission adapter component is further configured to perform parallel processing of new formatted data received from the formatting component and the formatted data retrieved from the data repository device.

7. The cloud gateway device of claim 1 , wherein the header information is based on message queuing information retrieved from a message queuing data store by the transmission adapter component, the message queuing information comprising at least processing priority information defining processing priorities for respective data tags collected by the application interface component.

8. The cloud gateway device of claim 7 , wherein the header information comprises at least one of a customer identifier of an industrial enterprise associated with the industrial controller, a site identifier associated with a plant facility, a virtual service engineer identifier, priority information specifying a processing priority for the industrial data, a message type identifier indicating a type of the industrial data, or a process identifier indicating a type of processing to be performed on the industrial data.

9. The cloud gateway device of claim 1 , wherein the data repository device comprises another cloud gateway device.

10. A method for processing industrial data for migration to a cloud platform, comprising:
sending, by a cloud gateway device comprising a processor, gateway registration information to a registration server device, wherein the gateway registration information comprises at least identification information for the cloud gateway device and an indication of a number of industrial data points being collected by the cloud gateway device, and wherein the registration server device stores identity information and status information for data repository devices connected to a same network as the cloud gateway device;
collecting, by the cloud gateway device, industrial data from an industrial control device associated with an industrial enterprise;
converting, by the cloud gateway device, the industrial data to conform to a defined data format to yield formatted data;
adding, by the cloud gateway device, header information to the formatted data to yield a data packet;
sending, by the cloud gateway device, the data packet to a cloud platform device over a first communication link;
in response to determining that the first communication link has been interrupted:
sending, by the cloud gateway device, a query to the registration server device requesting an identity of a data repository device of the data repository devices;
receiving, by the cloud gateway device, response data comprising the identity of the data repository device, wherein the data repository device is selected by the registration server device based on the number of industrial data points and the status information for the data repository devices;
establishing, by the cloud gateway device, a second communication link to the data repository device; and
redirecting, by the cloud gateway device, the formatted data to the data repository device over the second communication link.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising establishing the second communication link based on information about the external data repository device contained in the response data.

12. The method of claim 10 , further comprising performing the establishing and the redirecting further in response to determining that a defined percentage of local storage capacity of the cloud gateway device has been filled.

13. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
in response to determining that the first communication link has become available:
retrieving the formatted data from the data repository device via the second communication link,
adding the header information to the formatted data retrieved from the data repository device to yield another data packet; and
sending the other data packet to the cloud platform device over the first communication link.

14. The method of claim 10 , wherein the sending the other data packet comprises sending the other data packet to the cloud platform device in parallel with one or more new data packets containing industrial data collected more recently than the formatted data retrieved from the data repository device.

15. The method of claim 10 , wherein the adding the header information comprises adding at least one of a customer identifier, a site identifier associated with a plant facility, a virtual service engineer identifier, priority information, a message type identifier indicating a type of the industrial data, or a process identifier indicating a type of processing to be performed on the industrial data.

Assignees

• Rockwell Automation Tech Inc

Inventors

• Maturana Francisco P
• Asenjo Juan L

Classifications

• G06F9/5072 Primary

  Grid computing · CPC title

• G06F9/541

  via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications · CPC title

• H04L67/1097 Primary

  for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS] · CPC title