| title | description | author | ms.author | ms.topic | ms.custom | ms.date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tutorial: Add assets | Tutorial: Add OPC UA assets that publish messages to the MQTT broker in your Azure IoT Operations cluster. | dominicbetts | dobett | tutorial |
| 11/14/2024 |
In this tutorial, you manually add OPC UA assets to your Azure IoT Operations cluster. These assets publish messages to the MQTT broker in your Azure IoT Operations cluster. Typically, an OT user completes these steps.
An asset is a physical device or logical entity that represents a device, a machine, a system, or a process. For example, a physical asset could be a pump, a motor, a tank, or a production line. A logical asset that you define can have properties, stream telemetry, or generate events.
OPC UA servers are software applications that communicate with assets. OPC UA tags are data points that OPC UA servers expose. OPC UA tags can provide real-time or historical data about the status, performance, quality, or condition of assets.
In this tutorial, you use the operations experience web UI to create your assets. You can also use the Azure CLI to complete some of these tasks.
An instance of Azure IoT Operations deployed in a Kubernetes cluster. To create an instance, use one of the following to deploy Azure IoT Operations:
- Quickstart: Run Azure IoT Operations in GitHub Codespaces with K3s provides simple instructions to deploy an Azure IoT Operations instance that you can use for the tutorials.
- Deployment overview provides detailed instructions to deploy an Azure IoT Operations instance on Windows using Azure Kubernetes Service Edge Essentials or Ubuntu using K3s.
To sign in to the operations experience web UI, you need a Microsoft Entra ID account with at least contributor permissions for the resource group that contains your Kubernetes - Azure Arc instance. To learn more, see Operations experience web UI.
Unless otherwise noted, you can run the console commands in this tutorial in either a Bash or PowerShell environment.
The data that OPC UA servers expose can have a complex structure and can be difficult to understand. Azure IoT Operations provides a way to model OPC UA assets as tags, events, and properties. This modeling makes it easier to understand the data and to use it in downstream processes such as the MQTT broker and data flows.
This tutorial uses the OPC PLC simulator to generate sample data. To deploy the OPC PLC simulator, run the following command:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/explore-iot-operations/main/samples/quickstarts/opc-plc-deployment.yamlThe following snippet shows the YAML file that you applied:
:::code language="yaml" source="~/azure-iot-operations-samples/samples/quickstarts/opc-plc-deployment.yaml":::
Caution
This configuration isn't secure. Don't use this configuration in a production environment.
To create asset endpoints, assets and subscribe to OPC UA tags and events, use the operations experience.
Browse to the operations experience in your browser and sign in with your Microsoft Entra ID credentials.
A site is a collection of Azure IoT Operations instances. Sites typically group instances by physical location and make it easier for OT users to locate and manage assets. Your IT administrator creates sites and assigns Azure IoT Operations instances to them. Because you're working with a new deployment, there are no sites yet. You can find the cluster you created in the previously by selecting View unassigned instances. In the operations experience, an instance represents a cluster where you deployed Azure IoT Operations.
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/site-list.png" alt-text="Screenshot that shows the unassigned instances node in the operations experience.":::
Select the instance where you deployed Azure IoT Operations in the previous tutorial:
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/cluster-list.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure IoT Operations instance list.":::
Tip
If you don't see any instances, you might not be in the right Microsoft Entra ID tenant. You can change the tenant from the top right menu in the operations experience.
When you deployed Azure IoT Operations in the previous article, you included a built-in OPC PLC simulator. In this step, you add an asset endpoint that enables you to connect to the OPC PLC simulator.
To add an asset endpoint:
Select Asset endpoints and then Create asset endpoint:
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/asset-endpoints.png" alt-text="Screenshot that shows the asset endpoints page in the operations experience.":::
Enter the following endpoint information:
Field Value Asset endpoint name opc-ua-connector-0OPC UA server URL opc.tcp://opcplc-000000:50000User authentication mode AnonymousTo save the definition, select Create.
This configuration deploys a new asset endpoint called
opc-ua-connector-0to the cluster. You can usekubectlto view the asset endpoints:kubectl get assetendpointprofile -n azure-iot-operations
After you select your instance in operations experience, you see the available list of assets on the Assets page. If there are no assets yet, this list is empty:
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/create-asset-empty.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure IoT Operations empty asset list.":::
To create an asset, select Create asset. Then enter the following asset information:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Asset Endpoint | opc-ua-connector-0 |
| Asset name | thermostat |
| Description | A simulated thermostat asset |
| Default MQTT topic | azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat |
Remove the existing Custom properties and add the following custom properties. Be careful to use the exact property names, as the Power BI template in a later tutorial queries for them:
| Property name | Property detail |
|---|---|
| batch | 102 |
| customer | Contoso |
| equipment | Boiler |
| isSpare | true |
| location | Seattle |
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/create-asset-details.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure IoT Operations asset details page.":::
Select Next to go to the Add tags page.
Add two OPC UA tags on the Add tags page. To add each tag, select Add tag or CSV and then select Add tag. Enter the tag details shown in the following table:
| Node ID | Tag name | Observability mode |
|---|---|---|
| ns=3;s=SpikeData | temperature | None |
The Observability mode is one of the following values: None, Gauge, Counter, Histogram, or Log.
You can select Manage default settings to change the default sampling interval and queue size for each tag.
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/add-tag.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure IoT Operations add tag page.":::
Select Next to go to the Add events page and then Next to go to the Review page.
Review your asset and tag details and make any adjustments you need before you select Create:
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/review-asset.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure IoT Operations create asset review page.":::
This configuration deploys a new asset called thermostat to the cluster. You can use kubectl to view the assets:
kubectl get assets -n azure-iot-operationsTo view the asset endpoint and asset you created in the Azure portal, go to the resource group that contains your Azure IoT Operations instance. You can see the thermostat asset in the Azure IoT Operations resource group. If you select Show hidden types, you can also see the asset endpoint:
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/azure-portal.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure portal showing the Azure IoT Operations resource group including the asset and asset endpoint.":::
The portal enables you to view the asset details. Select JSON View for more details:
:::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-add-assets/thermostat-asset.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Azure IoT Operations asset details in the Azure portal.":::
[!INCLUDE deploy-mqttui]
To verify that the thermostat asset you added is publishing data, view the telemetry in the azure-iot-operations/data topic:
Client $server-generated/0000aaaa-11bb-cccc-dd22-eeeeee333333 received PUBLISH (d0, q0, r0, m0, 'azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat', ... (92 bytes)) azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat {"temperature":{"SourceTimestamp":"2025-02-14T11:27:44.5030912Z","Value":48.17536741017152}} Client $server-generated/0000aaaa-11bb-cccc-dd22-eeeeee333333 received PUBLISH (d0, q0, r0, m0, 'azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat', ... (90 bytes)) azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat {"temperature":{"SourceTimestamp":"2025-02-14T11:27:45.50333Z","Value":98.22872507286887}} Client $server-generated/0000aaaa-11bb-cccc-dd22-eeeeee333333 received PUBLISH (d0, q0, r0, m0, 'azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat', ... (92 bytes)) azure-iot-operations/data/thermostat {"temperature":{"SourceTimestamp":"2025-02-14T11:27:46.503381Z","Value":12.533323356430426}} If there's no data flowing, restart the aio-opc-opc.tcp-1 pod:
Find the name of your
aio-opc-opc.tcp-1pod by using the following command:kubectl get pods -n azure-iot-operationsThe name of your pod looks like
aio-opc-opc.tcp-1-849dd78866-vhmz6.Restart the
aio-opc-opc.tcp-1pod by using a command that looks like the following example. Use theaio-opc-opc.tcp-1pod name from the previous step:kubectl delete pod aio-opc-opc.tcp-1-849dd78866-vhmz6 -n azure-iot-operations
The sample tags you added in the previous tutorial generate messages from your asset that look like the following example:
{ "temperature": { "SourceTimestamp": "2025-02-14T11:27:46.503381Z", "Value": 212.45 } }In this tutorial, you added an asset endpoint and then defined an asset and tags. The assets and tags model data from the OPC UA server to make the data easier to use in an MQTT broker and other downstream processes. You use the thermostat asset you defined in the next tutorial.
If you're continuing on to the next tutorial, keep all of your resources.
[!INCLUDE tidy-resources]
Tutorial: Send asset telemetry to the cloud using a data flow.
