Hello,
I have project of monitoring remote location over GSM network using ModbusTCP protocol. I will have 10000 tags total. From that, I will have historian on 100 tags, one tag per location. Number of users would be max 10.
What system requirements you suggest? How to know how big will be database and how large storage to buy?
Thank you in advance.
This is a little hard to recommend. What is your tag update rate? How long do you want the data for?
I recommend you setup a simple PC and run a trial to see what you get. Call IA and see if you can get a 30 day trial license and that should provide you all the answers you need. You do not need a lot of hardware to run that simple of a system. A modern desktop PC running Linux would probably do it.
For example, I have 34 million records (every time a tag changes) and it takes up 1.64GB. Their are techniques to keep your historian from being too large and they are based on how much of a change you want to notice. The historian records a timestamp and a value. I can tell it to only record a new value when the tag changes by x%. See https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Configuring+Tag+History
Then when it pulls the data back your tell it what you want it to do with the data between the two time stamps. If I do not have any data it interpolates between the two values. Here is the manual if you have questions.
https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Tag+Historian#TagHistorian-TagHistorianQuerying
This is how the historian store values is SQL:
| tagid | intvalue | floatvalue | stringvalue | datevalue | dataintegrity | t_stamp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 852 | NULL | 248.406433105469 | NULL | NULL | 192 | 1612161575184 |
| 852 | NULL | 248.26676940918 | NULL | NULL | 192 | 1612161576183 |
First, thank you very much for detail answer.
Tag update rate will be on every minute and I will need to keep data for one year period.
Maybe server with 4 CPU core, 16 GB of RAM and 1TB HDD would be OK for long run?
I would recommend 32GB of RAM just because RAM is so cheap. Also consider using a 1TB M.2 SSD because it just so much faster and it will help you tremendously when you run queries.
You may want a larger HDD (4TB?) to do backups of your system. Hope you find this helpful and welcome to the Ignition community! 
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Thank you. Glad to be part of Ignition community.
Yes, RAM and SSD are cheap but only when we speak about desktop PC components. Server components are much more expensive. RAM maybe not so much but SSD... 
Fair point. But you have to admit they are steadily going down in price. If you want to better future proof this build, SSD is the way to go. Just my 2 cents though.
I take it the intention is to put the Database and the Gateway on the same server?
If so depending on what DB you plan to use you will most likely need more RAM.
I wouldn't recommend having the Gateway and DB on the same server but if you don't have an option, then it will work.
Yes, Database and Gateway will be on same server. I was planing to use MySQL.
I would look at your architecture a little more. You have a GSM cellular network. I am assuming that you want to pull tags back real-time at the lowest total cost. You need to get those tags from the devices and sent back to the server you want to store the data on. Where are your users versus your devices? What side of the network on they on Local or Remote?
Most of us have a wired network so network traffic does not present that much of an ongoing cost (much). For you the network traffic across the GSM radio is going to be significant. Ignition does a really cool thing with tags that if no one is looking at that tag and your are not recording it to history it does not poll the tag. It does poll the controller to make sure it is online but your will reduce your traffic.
All of my servers are sitting on IT’s network with virtualized with separate SQL machines versus the application machine.
You may want to place remote machines on the local device networks (maybe consider Ignition Edge devices). Let them act as the gateway to the devices. They can store the local data and be called on when someone wants to look at a parameter remotely. The local machine can then control the store and forward to your historian to make it more reliable.
https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Store+and+Forward
Ignition is really easy to get up and running but to configure and optimize it takes some effort and thought. I recommend talking to your sales rep about your specific use case and they can provide some really valuable insights and recommendations.
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Users will connect through Internet, over VPN. I would really like to call some one for recommendations but there is no Inductive Automation representative in Serbia.
But Inductive University and this forum are gold.
Most cloud computer providers will give you a few hundred dollars in trial credits for you to figure this out. They track every metric you’d want to know and you may decide that’s a lot better and easier than running your own bare metal because you can scale it with the click of a mouse as needed.
Hello @lrose,
I managed to convince company managment that we need backup server. So this will be situation with Ignition Master and Backup server. What would be recomendation for DB?
Do I need DB on both server, or just on one (backup server). DB is MySQL.
Neither, if you are trying to provide redundancy, then you will need the DB on a server that is reachable from both the Master and Backup, but not dependent on either.
A separate server for the DB is the best solution.