Inter-Zone Alarms and Events

The DeltaV Zones environment supports viewing alarms and recording events between zones. This section explains the configuration and setup required to accomplish inter-zone alarm viewing and event recording. This section also explains how alarms and events from other zones appear in DeltaV applications. For inter-zone alarm and event viewing and recording, all connected zones must be in the same time zone.

Note  Time stamps for inter-zone alarms and events are always taken from the source node where the event is generated. For example, if ZONE_B records events in the ZONE_A system, the time stamp of these events is the time in ZONE_A.

Time stamps displayed in Operator Applications (Operate, Event Chronicle) are always from the time from the zone in which the alarm or event originated. This is true for other user actions such as alarm suppression and alarm acknowledgement. 

If it is important in your DeltaV Zones system that time is synchronized between zones (to correct for time differences in system clocks, for example), you must address this in your installation. One way to do this would be to include a Network Time Server in each zone and ensure that they are synchronized (using a GPS device, for example). 

The section DeltaV Zones contains information on setting up zones. Familiarize yourself with that information before continuing in this section.  

Viewing Alarms and Recording Events Between Zones

To view alarms and record events from the remote zone in the local zone, assign Remote Zone Areas to the Alarms and Events subsystem of workstations in the local system. Doing so: 

• Adds the alarms from the Remote Zone Area to the alarm scope of the workstation (defines what alarms are eligible to show in active/suppressed alarm lists, alarm banner, and so on). 
• Includes all events from the Remote Zone Area in the Event Chronicle (should one be enabled) on that workstation. 

Note The DeltaV OPC Alarms and Events Server does not support inter-zone alarms and events. Alarms and events from remote zones appear in the Event Chronicle of a workstation (if the remote zone area is assigned to the workstation's Alarms and Events subsystem), but are not seen by OPC Alarms and Events clients (Plant Event Historian, for example) connected to the workstation.

The alarms and events that are recorded in a workstation's Event Chronicle (if it is enabled) depend on the following:

• The workstation's alarm scope — The local plant areas and Remote Zone Areas assigned to the workstation's Alarm and Events subsystem.
• The shared areas in the remote zone — Areas in the remote zone must be shared for alarms and events from the remote area to appear in the local zone's Event Chronicle.

The alarms that appear in a workstation's alarm banner and alarm displays depend on the following:

• The areas shared in the remote zone — Areas in remote zones must be shared with the local zone for alarms to appear. Alarms from remote zone areas that are shared as read only cannot be acknowledged from the local zone.
• The workstation's alarm scope — The local plant areas and Remote Zone Areas assigned to the workstation's Alarm and Events subsystem.
• The alarm scope of the currently logged in user — The local plant areas and Remote Zone areas for which the currently logged in user has been granted any security key from the DeltaV User Manager.

Only those alarms and events that meet these criteria appear in the alarm banner and alarm displays. 

Alarm Banner and Alarm Lists

The number of inter-zone active alarms that can appear in the alarm list is limited to 5000. The DeltaV Operate Area Alarm Filtering display supports a total of 250 local and remote zone areas and shows all Remote Zone areas (by the remote shared name) and indicates those whose alarms the current user is eligible to see. You can filter out alarms from Remote Zone Areas as well as local areas. Once alarms are visible in a local system, the filter works on remote zone areas as if they were local areas.

Alarm banner and alarm summary alarm message strings appear based on the alarm types defined in the originating zone. Because workstations are merging alarms from different zones into a single display, alarm priority behavior (priority words, horn sound files, alarm banner alarm filtering configuration) is determined by the alarm configuration of the zone displaying the alarm. Alarm priorities 3 through 15 are the same in all DeltaV zones, so alarms from other zones use the displaying zone's alarm priority text for the corresponding numeric priority level. 

To make alarms appear the same in all zones, you must ensure that all custom alarm priorities and custom alarm types are in every system. You can accomplish this by exporting and importing alarm priorities and types between zones as necessary.

When an alarm is from another zone the alarm extended information button includes a satellite dish: . Clicking the button displays the following information about the alarm:

• Alarm time stamp
• Module description
• Parameter in alarm (in the form zone%module/parameter)
• Alarm Word
• Alarm Priority

The DeltaV Alarm Summary control includes a Zone column so that you can add it to alarm summaries to show the zone in which an alarm originates. The default versions of the alarm-related pictures (AlarmSum.grf, AlarmList.grf, AlmSupp.grf, and so on) do not include the Zone column. You may want to make your own versions of the alarm-related pictures to include the Zone column if your module and node name tags are duplicated between zones. Without the Zone column operators have no way of determining the zone in which an alarm is generated.

After you make new versions of the alarm-related pictures you will need to edit the UserSettings.grf picture and the DeltaVPicture.Layout file to call your pictures instead of the default versions. 

Event Chronicle and Process History View

The workstations in each DeltaV system collect process and event data in that system. Inter-zone parameter writes are recorded in both the originating and receiving zones, if the Event Chronicle database is enabled and local areas and Remote Zone Areas are assigned to the appropriate workstation's Alarms and Events subsystems.

System-wide events such as logins, logouts, and downloads are always associated with AREA_A in a DeltaV system. This means that AREA_A must be assigned to the Alarms and Events subsystem for those types of events to be recorded. This is true even if you rename AREA_A. The area that was named AREA_A must be assigned to the Alarms and Events subsystem to record system-wide events. This is true for DeltaV Zones as well.

For example, a DeltaV Zones environment includes two zones, ZONE_A and ZONE_B. For ZONE_B's Event Chronicle to record system-wide events from ZONE_A, its AREA_A must be shared with ZONE_B and the shared area must be assigned to the Alarms and Events subsystem on a node in ZONE_B. For example, if the system is configured as shown in the table below, the Event Chronicle in ZONE_B records system-wide events occurring in ZONE_A and in ZONE_B. In the Event Chronicle in ZONE_A, only system-wide events from ZONE_A are recorded.

How events appear in the Event Chronicle depends on:

• The zone the change is made from
• The zone the change is made in
• Where events are recorded.

In general, inter-zone event records include zone information and are recorded in both zones, if the configuration in both zones supports it. The area column displays the Remote Zone Area name of the remote zone in the local zone. Other fields display zone information as appropriate. For example, given the following configuration of two zones:

In addition, local areas in both zones are shared with read/write access.

In ZONE_A user Fred, with configure privileges, is logged into a local operator station. Fred launches DeltaV Operate, opens a picture with datalinks configured to write to another zone, for example, DVSYS.ZONE_B%MOD1/PARAM1.F_CV. Fred changes the value of PARAM1, then launches Process History View and connects to OP_STA_A. The Event Chronicle record for his action appears as shown: 

In ZONE_B user Fred, with configure privileges, logs in to local Operator station OP_STA_B, launches Process History View, and connects to OP_STA_B. The Event Chronicle record appears as shown: