This article will give you the prerequisite information for ABB Ability™ History installation and configuration for Windows, Linux and running in Docker. After each article, we provide links to related tutorials.

System Typologies

There are two types of system typologies to consider before starting the installation process. Please visit the links to view further information, if unsure of installation process.

1. Networked System (Equipment Model based): Sometimes industrial systems need more flexibility than hierarchical structure can provide. Networked topology approach provides this flexibility. System has the following characteristics:
   1. Works when database uses Equipment Model for time series configuration (support for Tag/Variable is limited).
   2. Network configuration is done using Equipment models and configured in EquipmentPublication class. Communication is handled by NetSync.
   3. NetSync is located and running in the sending node, which is better from security perspective because only outbound port (443) is needed.
2. Hierarchical System (Tags and Variable based): Both Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) and IIoT systems are typically constructed from layered architecture where so-called data collector nodes are connected to devices, control systems and other data sources. Nodes can form hierarchies such as production line and factory level and they can then further be connected to upper level computing node, e.g. enterprise level. This article will guide to installing and configuring a basic ABB Ability History based Hierarchical System using TagConsistencyControl and Vtrinlink.

Installation on Windows

Prerequisites

Before you start installing ABB Ability™ History, make sure that you have a supported Windows operating system version installed on your computer. You can see your operating system version in "Control Panel" > "System", for example. Supported Windows versions are Windows Server 2022, 2019, or 2016, Windows 11 or 10, and the respective Windows embedded systems. See more details on the release notes of the version Release notes .

Log in as a user that has administrator privileges. If you have the User Account Control (UAC) setting enabled, you must run the installations with "run as administrator". If you have a newer operating system version than the ones listed above, ABB Ability™ History may not support it yet.

First, you must decide the following:

• The target directory for the database files (for example C:\RTDBData). It is recommended that a separate drive be used for the operating system, database, and backup in the production environment.
• The ODBC Data Source Name for the database (for example, "my_rtdb"). The "Project CPIMS" style installation requires that the name has the format "computername-RTDB" or "nlbname-RTDB".
• Should a high availability/redundant configuration have two or more consistency-controlled database copies in separate RTDB server computers?

If you have an existing ABB Ability™ History version, the version can be upgraded by following these same instructions.

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Note:

Installation of a multiple History databases or multiple ABB Ability™ History versions (different) on a single computer is not supported.

Installation tutorials

We have prepared separate tutorials for Windows installations. Please find them under Installation on Windows tutorial. Under the section you may find separate tutorials for following:

• Installing History Server - Single Node System
• Installing History Server - High Availability System
• Installing DCN (Data Collector Node) of a Hierarchical System
• Upgrading History software
• Uninstalling History software
• Package manager based installation

Installation on Linux

Currently, ABB Ability™ History the installation packages are only available within ABB's intranet, but they are planned to be released on a public internet server at a later date.

As part of the ABB Ability™ History like is written in managed code, you will need to install one of the managed code frameworks. There are currently two versions of the managed components provided:

1. One set targeting Microsoft's .NET Core.
2. One set targeting Mono framework.

The .NET Core version is a bit more lightweight and does not include all the functionality (like Vtrin GUI). Although at the time of writing, the .NET Core version is a bit more unstable and might require more fine-tuning. It is aimed that in the future it will be the officially supported version (which does not mean that Mono could not be officially supported as well).

Both Mono and .NET Core versions can co-exist in the same machine, so you can easily try them both.

There are multiple versions of packages available, the Main and QA are mainly for testing purposes and then versions with a version number like 5.2 that are production releases.

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Currently, there is no way to create an RTDB database within ARM-based Linux. You need to create the database in Windows or x86/x64 Linux and copy it over. The default database location is /var/lib/rtdbdata.

Supported distributions and platforms

Summary of supported distributions:

Debian versions might, but are not guaranteed to work on other Debian based distributions, like Ubuntu as long as the correct set of packages is used. To find the Debian version the installed Ubuntu is based on top of, please check /etc/debian_version. Currently, there is a known issue with Ubuntu 18.04 that prevents OPCUAClient from starting up due to incorrect OpenSSL version shipped with Ubuntu (Debian Buster ships with 1.1.1, while Ubuntu 18.04 has 1.1.0 based).

Arch Linux support also covers all other Arch-based distributions like Manjaro. While not guaranteed, it is not expected that there are similar problems as with Ubuntu as Arch philosophy of versioning is fundamentally different from Debian's.

Installation tutorials

On our tutorials section you may find the basic installation tutorials under Installation on Linux. The Linux Installation guides further include the following tutorials:

• Service Configuration on systemd
• Installing a HTTPS certificate
• Configuring Vtrin Server
• Installing the ABB root certificate

Running in Docker

Docker provides a way to run applications securely isolated in a container, packaged with all its dependencies and libraries. For a general overview of what Docker is, please see this Wikipedia article. ABB Ability™ History Docker installation can be done by following the instructions under our Running in Docker Tutorial.

There are multiple scenarios where Docker is involved. CpmPlus history on its own is offered as Docker image. There is also concepts such as Edge History and cpmPlus connector which employ Docker containers.

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All .NET applications are run with .NET Core in the provided Docker images.

Docker tutorial

We have prepared a separate tutorial for running the ABB Ability™ History on Docker and you may find it under Running in Docker tutorial.

Running in Azure Kubernetes Service

Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is a platform designed to deploy, scale and manage containerized applications within a cluster. For more details in general about Kubernetes, you can go through this article.

ABB Ability™ History Kubernetes on Azure AKS can be configured by following the instructions under our Deploying ABB Ability™ History on Azure Kubernetes Service Tutorial.