Platform architecture

Contents

• Platform architecture

  • Basics

  • Service types

    • Common types

    • Service names

  • Primary external services

  • Additional external services

  • Service management

    • Create

    • Manage

    • Destroy / undeploy / purge

    • Advanced configuration

Basics

Each EVA ICS v4 node has the following architecture:

• Services are launched by the core (if deployed and setup) or by external launchers.

• The core and all services are connected to the single inter-process communication bus, based on BUS/RT.

• BUS/RT is a high-speed industrial IPC bus, which can provide 100K+ RPC calls a second and 1M+ events a second without significant CPU load. BUS/RT provides zero security in favor of speed and reliability, so all services/equipment in the local cluster must communicate via a private network only.

• EVA ICS core and services use EAPI layer above the bus, which contains unified RPC, topics and event format and exchange with MessagePack-encoded payloads.

• The node server has the following services embedded:

  • .broker BUS/RT broker service

  • eva.core the core service

  • eva.launcher. external service launchers

  • eva.registry the registry database service

• An external service is a local/remote process, connected to the node bus.

• External services are usually launched by “eva.launcher” services, which push initial configuration payloads, provide additional startup and watchdog functions. The external service processes can be launched manually.

• External equipment (such as custom hardware controllers) can be connected to the bus directly (if externals sockets are specified in “eva/config/bus” registry key).

• Multiple EVA ICS nodes can be replicated and interact with each other via replication services.

• Authentication services are commonly used by HMI services only.

• HMI services provide web servers to host user-interface applications and HTTP/web socket API.

See also: The core and services.

Service types

Common types

There are several common types of services, used in EVA ICS v4:

• authentication services provide ACLs, login- and key-based authentication

• controllers and PLC gateways provide logic and/or equipment connection services. The base distribution includes controller gateways for popular industrial protocols, such as Modbus, Ethernet/IP etc.

• database services provide input/output functions (unified database EAPI) for SQL and time-series databases

• HMI services provide HTTP API and host user-interface web applications.

• other services various tools and helpers, such as shared locks services, mailers etc.

Service names

• When created/deployed, service IDs should be named as:

  • “eva.aaa.ID” - authentication and ACL services

  • “eva.hmi.ID” - HMI services

  • “eva.controller.ID” - controllers and gateways

  • “eva.db.ID” - database services

  • “eva.repl.ID” - replication services

  • “eva.svc.ID” - all other services

Majority of services can have multiple instances running under different names.

Primary external services

If installed with “-a” argument, the following services are created automatically:

• eva.aaa.acl ACL service

• eva.aaa.localauth Local authentication service (local users / API keys)

• eva.hmi.default The default HMI service (web UI and HTTP API)

• eva.filemgr.ID File managers, allow to deploy/undeploy custom files in EVA_DIR/runtime. The primary file manager service on each node is automatically created and called “eva.filemgr.main”.

Additional external services

See list of all default services.

Service management

Create

If managed by EVA ICS launchers, a service can be created either:

• via “eva.core” bus RPC

• using eva-shell (svc create / svc deploy commands)

If deployed with eva-shell, the payload must have the following minimal format:

- id: SERVICE_ID
  params:
    command: # path to the service executable
    bus:
        path: var/bus.ipc # for the local bus
    config:
        # service configuration

For the whole parameters, see bus RPC “svc.deploy” method of “eva.core”.

Manage

Services provide bus RPC methods, methods “test” and “info” are mandatory.

If using eva-shell, service methods can be either assigned to dedicated commands or be called directly with “svc call” command.

Service methods can be called via bus RPC directly, e.g.:

/opt/eva4/sbin/bus /opt/eva4/var/bus.ipc rpc call eva.aaa.acl acl.list

If payload is required, it must be packed to MessagePack. A tool “bin/yml2mp” can be used to convert YAML files to MessagePack from the command-line.

Destroy / undeploy / purge

Use either eva-shell or the corresponding bus RPC methods of “eva.core”.

Advanced configuration

Service configuration files support extended non-standard YAML directives:

# includes YAML/JSON file
field1: ^include /path/to/file

# includes YAML/JSON, generated by an external command
field2: ^pipe /path/to/command args

# includes external file as text
field3: ^include-text /path/to/file

# includes text, generated by an external command
field4: ^pipe-text /path/to/command args