I am working on setting up a database for which to (1) write manufacturing data from machines to database for future reference and (2) have machines read recipe data to dictate machine cycles/parameters.
We are debating between hosting the database on an AWS server or hosting it on a physical server at our plant/office.
The pros of the AWS server are that its relatively simple to implement and requires minimal maintenance (we legit have no IT department and are working with a consultant for all of this), it is easily scaleable if our storage requirements increase, and there is no risk of loss of information due to hardware issues that you could see with a physical server.
The main con of AWS is that if we have an internet outage, we could lose data and/or not be able to read data. We use Comcast and have probably 3+ outages a year that last a few hours. However, I know that Ignition has a store and forward feature and I was wondering, would this be sufficient for covering those few-hour gaps of internet loss? There would be about 20,000 data points per hour at our current scale, though this could increase.
I think we'd still have to store recipe information locally, but this does not change as frequently and we could have it update on a daily or weekly schedule instead.
Would it just make more sense to go with a physical server instead?