Page History

1. The Problem

A utility company needed more than just monitoring, they required a gateway solution to read from 125,000 PLC points and write to 125,000 eletrical points across 5 remote substations. Their legacy system couldn't handle protocol translation at scale, lacked real-time visibility, had no redundancy, and required full downtime for any system changes—risking critical grid operations during maintenance.

2. The Solution

2.1 Overview

• Edge: FrameworX EdgeConnect.

• Central: FrameworX Enterprise with UI.

• DataHub: TagProvider for distributed engineering and close to zero downtime Edge additions.

• Protocols: DNP3 (master/slave), Modbus.

• Scale: 5 Edges × 25k tags = 125k tags publishing; overall 250k points (125k Modbus reads + 125k DNP3 writes).

• Modules: Alarms and Historian (Postgres + TimescaleDB).

• Sizing: 48 vCPU and 128 GB RAM (including redundancy).

• Redundancy: One pair of full-project redundancy; store-and-forward enabled.

2.2 Logical Diagram (high level)

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  <text x="432" y="84" class="cap">[ DataHub (TapProvider)/UI ]</text>

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  <line x1="200" y1="160" x2="200" y2="340" stroke="#333"></line>
  <text x="240" y="250" class="sub">reads historical + alarms</text>

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  <text x="92" y="364" class="cap">[ Postgres + TimescaleDB ]</text>
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  <text x="712" y="324" class="cap">[ Edge Sites ×5 ]</text>
  <text x="720" y="352" class="sub">• FrameworX EdgeConnect</text>
  <text x="720" y="376" class="sub">• Collects Modbus (read)</text>
  <text x="720" y="400" class="sub">• Publishes to DNP3 (write)</text>
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Expanded flow:

• 5 EdgeConnect collecting data with Modbus and creating datasets + alarms
  → Postgres + TimescaleDB (Historian + Alarms)
  → FrameworX Enterprise showing data in the UI (UI Server).

2.3 Architecture Summary

• Edges: 5 units; 25k tags each.

• Central Services: Historian + Alarms; UI served by FrameworX Enterprise.

• Point Directionality: 125k reads (Modbus) + 125k writes (DNP3) = 250k.

• Operations: Distributed engineering via TagProvider; hot-add new Edge without downtime.

2.4 Redundancy & Store-and-Forward

• Redundancy: 1 pair of full project redundancy.

• Continuity: Store-and-forward for resilient ingestion.

3. Key Enablers

• DataHub “TapProvider” enabling distributed engineering.

• Redundancy (full-project pair) with store-and-forward.

• Electrical protocols such as DNP3 (plus Modbus).

4. The Results

The FrameworX solution delivered:

• Full Gateway Capability: Data flow handling 250,000 points (125k Modbus reads → 125k DNP3 writes)

• Real-time Protocol Translation: Seamless Modbus-to-DNP3 conversion across all 5 sites

• Zero Downtime: Hot-add new sites without system interruption via DataHub TagProvider

• 99.99% Uptime: Full redundancy with store-and-forward eliminated data loss

• 85% Faster Deployment: New edge sites added in hours instead of days

• 40% Cost Reduction: Optimized infrastructure (48 vCPU, 128GB RAM) supporting entire redundant system

In this section...