Getting Started: Introduction for IT Roles

What Does This Article Cover?

This article provides guidance for Information Technology roles that may indirectly support an Industrial DataOps project. The article provides a brief overview of HighByte Intelligence Hub and some basic IT related considerations.

What is HighByte Intelligence Hub?
Deployment considerations
Network considerations
Monitoring considerations
Common tasks
Other related material

What is HighByte Intelligence Hub?

HighByte Intelligence Hub is an Industrial DataOps software solution designed specifically for industrial data modeling, delivery, and governance. The software securely connects devices, files, databases, and systems via open standards and native connections. The Intelligence Hub typically runs on-premises at the Edge and scales from embedded to server-grade computing platforms.

The Intelligence Hub can be configured to buffer data for the purpose of store and forward but is not used to persist data at scale. Rather, the Intelligence Hub passes through modeled and contextualized data payloads.

Intelligence Hub is not cloud-hosted software as a service.

Deployment Considerations:

The Intelligence Hub is a Java application that is accessed via a web browser. The Intelligence Hub may be installed on a Windows or Linux operating system and may be deployed using containers.

Administrators may network distributed Intelligence Hub "hubs" through a single management portal. In this pattern, it is common to deploy multiple hubs at a facility for the purpose of network segregation or performance scaling.

The Intelligence Hub may be configured for high availability. Intelligence Hub application-level redundancy allows a second instance of the Intelligence Hub to act as a backup in the event the primary instance fails.

Network Considerations:

An Intelligence Hub solution exchanges data with multiple systems including factory systems, business systems, and cloud services. Therefore, it is often necessary to configure communications through VPN, firewall, proxy server, and/or DMZ zones. This configuration is often necessary before a project may begin.

Monitoring:

Intelligence Hub includes a configurable Event Log that contains the runtime and audit log messages generated by the hub. A text-based version of the log is available and each log message in the text file is in JSON format, allowing external log monitoring tools to easily consume and index the messages.

Common Tasks:

We observe that Information Technology roles often assist with the following.

Software Deployment Tasks:

Provisioning server(s) for HighByte Intelligence Hub
Installing Java prerequisite software
Installing Intelligence Hub software

Network Configuration Tasks:

Creating and maintaining network rules for source and target systems
Reviewing network security policies and making any necessary adjustments