Hi everyone. My name is Jessica Morell and I am the product manager for factorytalk
remote access and I'm here with Dominic today. Hello, my name is Dominic DeRose the
global portfolio engineer. Otherwise known as commercial engineering for factorytalk remote
access back to you, Jessica Thanks, so, welcome to IE 79, extend your
reach with factorytalk, remote access overview, architecture and options.
Today we're going to go over a couple different things, but our agenda is to talk a
little bit about fact remote access value drivers.
Then, we'll do an intro, quick introduction to factorytalk, remote access will dig a
little bit deeper into the solution and then we'll talk a little bit about some sample
architectures and then Dominic is going to jump into a demo.
So the first thing is to talk about the remote access value drivers.
So there's a lot of different value that that you can get from using leveraging remote
access but for oems and SIs one of the biggest things is the cost savings by
reducing
travel time and needing to go to an end user site. Troubleshoot
it also improves response time with the ability to take a look at what's going on in
the system right away, maximizes productivity by being able to do
quick fixes and on and increase your on demand response time.
And it also It has gives you the ability to create new service contracts and as a service
business models to help support your end customers. For end users, There's also a lot
of
value as well for remote access. So, generally, improving up, time and being able
to access the result, in Faster issue resolution, increase efficiency by
leveraging real-time collaboration tools, and also extending your Workforce by leveraging,
oems and sis, increase security by adhering to IT security Standards
And restricting access to certain things, and then better visibility into analytics by
harnessing machine data.
Now we're going to jump into the factorytalk remote access introduction.
So, factorytalk remote access is a solution that delivers secure connections over
the internet to enable performance and security for on-demand support Remote,
assistance, installation, programming troubleshooting and maintenance of any remote
automation system and application. Remote access is facilitated through a fault
tolerant and redundant Cloud infrastructure and creates an end-to-end secure connection
between the user and the, and the plant or remote and point.
Factorytalk remote access is a cloud enabled Solution. That's powered by factorytalk Hub.
And remote, access is part of the Design Hub suite of products, which includes Design
Studio, Factorytalk Optixs Studio, Twin Studio, Factorytalk Vault and then remote
access as well. Factorytalk Design Hub is built on Microsoft Azure and uses the cloud
to increase scalability, reduce capital, and maintenance expenses and deliver new tools,
that, that increase productivity. Now we're going to jump into the solution
overview. So factorytalk remote access is has two main
components to it. The factorytalk remote access manager, which
is a web client, used to maintain and initiate remote connections. And the remote
access and
point. We're going to jump a little bit more into each of these. But the remote access
manager is an all-in-one dashboard and tool based in the web client that allows you to
create different users, manage your account, activate VPN for remote connectivity and do
it
all in one place. The remote access endpoint. We've got a few
options there and that's a kind of a growing list of endpoint options. So, there is the
factorytalk remote access runtime, basic or pro software, the stratix 4300
remote access router, The Optix panel graphic terminal and the embedded Edge compute module
All of these things can be used as a remote access endpoint. Factorytalk,
remote access manager, allows oems, and SIs and maintenance Personnel, supporting the
automation systems, the tools to get connected from anywhere using or just a
web browser. So it's a part of factory talk Hub. Like I
mentioned before and this really has simplified role management and easy-to-use
tools. It uses your my.Rockwell account credentials and Dominic will show us that a
little bit later in the demo. And essentially, you can register devices to your
organization. This is where you will initiate the VPN connection to your endpoint. Create
groups and role-based users to manage different access. You can also configure the
Stratix 4300 router inside the remote access manager software as well,
and then also view audit, logs and domain activity and remote connection.
The factor talk, remote access manager is also available subscription.
The factory talk remote access is based on current connections. And so, essentially
concurrent connections, is the amount of people that need to be connected to a device
or endpoint. At the same time, a couple kind of notes Here, is that the
connections are assigned to an organization. Cannot be split apart across
multiple organizations and the concurrent connections are not
additive. But again, the factory talk, remote access manager is where you'll, you know, use
do your user profiling, permission control, initiate VPN and RDP sessions as well.
View audit logs, and things like that. And also manage your domain, or how you structure
your assets within the within Factory talk remote access as well.
There's a couple options when it comes to the
concurrent number, number of concurrent connections that you can have. And we've got
everything from one all the way to unlimited as you can see on there
on the slide. So wanted to show a little bit of an example
of what that current connection looks like. And what that kind of means So,
we've got a couple examples here. So we've got one, two, and three.
So, essentially, one connection can be, one person can be connected to one remote
endpoint at a time and two connections, the Factorytalk remote access manager. You can
have two people connected to two different endpoints at the same time. And then the
example of three, where we've got two people connected to the same end point, and another
person connected to another end point. So the big key thing to remember, here is, how many
people are going to need to be connected to something or a remote endpoint at the
same time. The next thing we're going to jump into now
is the nth remote access endpoints and the first thing that we're going to talk about is
the runtime software. So the runtime software is an installable
application. And it works with any compatible windows, or
Linux, industrial PC, meaning, if you've got a PC at the end user
site or where you need the remote end point, you can install the software and create a
remote access endpoint, there's essentially two, there are two
versions of this. So there's a basic and a pro,
and the basic allows connectivity to the IPC running the runtime software. So you'll see
that you'll have direct visibility into the applications running on that HMI or
industrial PC through Remote Desktop in a good example of
where, the basic makes sense, is if you've got an engineering workstation at an
end-user plant and you want to be able to get connected and leverage the software that's
installed on that, PC, at the end user,
the remote, the remote, the pro version allows
Connectivity, connectivity to that PC and the Network's attached to it. So, you'll be able
to see the Automation devices that are connected to it as well as that PC
itself to and the applications running on it. And so, an example, here is if you've got a
local engineer and you've got your own Studio 5000, local copy of Studio 5000 in your
making edits to a PLC. You can now go online with that with your Logix software
that's installed on your PC and download it to the remote and end site, to a PLC at the
remote
End site, There's a couple different things so
that are kind of laid out here. So with you, get the optimized VPN connection with the
basic in the Pro, the interactive tools, which allows you to do
remote, desktop chat, use the task manager, do screen captures and file transfers.
That's comes with the basic and the pro, the optimized VPN connection to remote
devices via Ethernet or serial. So right? So the
remote devices that connection but beyond the PC itself to other networks as only with, the
pro and then doing internet sharing as well is. Also another option that also only comes
with the pro version of the runtime software. The next endpoint we're going to talk about
is a stratix 4300 So the stratix 4300 is a physical piece of
Hardware that you can use as your end point as well, it comes right now in a wired
option, but there will be a Wi-Fi and cellular options available next year. This is
quick
and easy, installation. You go into the factorytalk manager, software to set it up
and get it connected. And then you can use an ethernet port or you
the USB on there to get it connected and set up for the first time you're configuring. It
has routing and NAT functionality is a part of it as well.
Everything once it's tied to your domain in Factory in the factory, talk remote access
manager, it is tied there. So we have something that's called, uh
unauthorized domain modification. So somebody can't move it from to and from a
different machine and try to tie it to different organizations or domains. It's once
it's even if they try to factory reset it, it'll
We'll stay tied to that domain. There's also a hardware commands and digital
I/O board as well. So if you wanted to set up,
allow, you know, allow or deny access based on
what you can do that as well. So you can do that through an HMI. You could do it through
a physical switch as well, just up to you. So the end user can control
who and when is getting, who is getting connected to it and they can actually
physically turn that off. Now, the third and fourth option for the
endpoint, we're going to talk about is the Optix panel, graphic Terminals and the
embedded Edge compute. So the Optics panel comes in two flavors, the
Compact and standard in each both, come with Factorytalk remote
access installed and ready to use on there. The Optix panel compact comes with the basic
license but you can upgrade to Pro and then the standard comes with the runtime
Pro license installed and ready to go
the embedded Edge compute Module is also comes with Factorytalk remote access and it
comes with the pro license. And it also comes with FactoryTalk Optix on it as well.
And those are both a, You can upgrade the Optics license if you
would like to as well, but remote access is provided by default
a couple other things. Here to is a secure remote access by default. So when we talk
about remote access, one of the big topics that comes up is security.
And I wanted to take a few seconds to talk a little bit about the built-in security
features and functionality. So we've got user group management. So you
can create role-based users and assign specific to specific to a specific group
and used, you know, you can invite, you can give, you know, People turn
temporary and permanent access to different devices, and you can really control who what
users and groups are being used integrated firewall. So you can configure a
permission and policies for traffic over the VPN tunnel
inherently within the product Audits and logging. So it will log connections and
activity going on within within the remote access
domain. And you can see, you can see that you can search it. You can
export that information and take a look at
what's going on in your domain. Your organization
authentication, so it only will you go confirm with only trusted devices that
are registered to that account, so kind of doing that authentic, authentication piece
Asset Management So within and will see this during the demo, but within factorytalk
remote access you can can, you can have a hierarchical form and establish user, and
group management. And it basically allows you it's like a folder structure. So, you can
create your set that up any way, that makes sense for you and really manage your assets
that you've got connected to factorytalk remote access. And then the physical
Naval MIT, which we talked a little bit about for the stratix for E300, but the actual
being able to turn it on and off and control who's going to connect it and when they're
getting connected and if anyone can get connected to it. So we're going to talk a
little bit about some sample architectures now.
So the first one I wanted to talk about is the factorytalk remote access
runtime Pro, and what that looks like here. So at the end point, we've got factorytalk
remote access runtime Pro installed on a PC. And so what you can see, See here is that we
can now see beyond the PC and into the automation devices connected to it and the
Network's attached to it. So again, an example for this would be if I
was the user or remote expert and I was using logix to
configure or troubleshoot a PLC I could get connected create a secure connection between
VPN tunnel between me and my runtime
at the end user site and then I could download and troubleshoot to a PLC right from
my computer for my local copy of Studio 5000. The second sample
architecture is the runtime basic here. So I want to show a little bit of something
different. So again, if I'm the troubleshooting and
creating a VPN tunnel for my FactorTalk remote access runtime basic that will allow
me connectivity to that PC running the runtime software and give me direct
visibility into the HMI or the industrial PC. So I will be able to see everything
that's installed on that runtime. It's looks like an RDP session. It'll give me that.
Of access tools but I won't have connection to the Network's attached to it,
through the VPN tunnels. I won't be able to take a local copy and download to the PLC
that software would have to be on the PC that has the runtime basic installed
on it. And the third example here, which is similar
to the remote access runtime Pro is the Stratix 4300 remote access
router. So this would allow connectivity directly to the Network's attached to it,
but I wouldn't necessarily have a See, connected to it. But again here if I have
Studio 5000 and I'm troubleshooting a PLC on the plant floor. I would be able to adopt
download directly to that PLC and troubleshoot and see the Network's attached
to it here. So, that's all I have for presentation. I'm going to hand it off to
Dominic to jump into the demo, and we're going to jump in and show what it looks like.
Thanks Jessica. Hello Dominic DeRose here with the access to
the demo. Let's go ahead and see what the product looks like an action.
So first things first, I'm going to go ahead and navigate to the factorytalk hub
environment. That's up the URL, Home.cloud.rockwellauotmation.com
pelota nation.com. Once you're here, you will get the option of
sign in or sign up. I'm already signed in so it's not going to ask me.
But once you're signed up with your my.Rockwell account, you can effectively come
in
here and use in the hamburger menu. In the top left, you can get asked your hands on the
remote access manager by going to create organization. And from here, we can create a
new organization and name it anything this happens, and is available. If this is the
first time you're making your own, your own organization. So if I say factorytalk, remote
access demo session,
that's my organization. This is just a
Description. You can get anything you want to help your
users. Find out what's more, what's happening here?
I'm going to get the location of Cleveland Ohio to so people never the physical location
of it. I'm going to go ahead and add quick logo
here. Just a little Rockwell Automation local. Once
you click next, do you also get the option to do? Either a public listing or private
listing? If you want to hide this organization from other people? So they
cannot just select it in join or attempt to join.
Hitting the next button. Here, it asks you, which applications from the factoryTalk
Hub Would like to apply this to I'm just going to keep them all selected.
Create the organization and you'll get a congratulatory
prompt that says, hey, you have successfully made this. We have applied a trial
entitlement of the following Services Under this organization
factory remote access the topic of today's demo and factorytalk Optix which is another
fine product we offer.
Exiting this going back to the hamburger menu and going to the home hub home, I'm actually
going to select an already working session that I have available
another organization. Now when you first access the remote access
solution here, I'm going to go ahead and click on this. It
may prompt me for a multi-factor authentication,
very well. So if this is the first time you've ever entered into the factorytalk
remote access solution, it will give you a multi-factor authentication. I'm walking with
my secondary device. If it's the first time you'll get prompted to create a multi Factor.
authentication. I'm already there. So just punch this in real
fast.
I'm now going to be entering the primary screen at the factorytalk road access
manager. Now, if this is the first time you've access
this, it will have you rename your organization
and call if you'll get another confirmation for are you sure you want to name your
organization this and once you confirm that, it will be called your domain from here on
out within the factorytalk remote access Solution, by default, we are dropped off on
the Explorer domain view. This is where you can organize and figure all of your remote
devices for the interest immediate. I I need to go to the tools and then the
download section here, I'm going to show you how to get those remote devices set up. So in
the download section, here we have all the various software, you can download and
install on the proper components to get connectivity to those remote devices.
So, first and foremost at the top of the screen here, we have the Stratix 4300
firmware. This is available to actually install within the 4300 stratix, which that
will help your stratix, which get connected to this, remote access demo, or your remote
access environment. Here, we have the factorytalk, remote access tools, you'll have
to install these On the local computer to facilitate a full and proper connection.
Here, we have the factorytalk remote access runtime of. This is one of our more
interesting ones. This is how you get a Remote device to be anywhere from any windows
or Linux operating system, or for a compute module. And at the bottom here, we have the
factorytalk remote access runtime, which is specifically for the Linux installations
currently it's in beta. By the time you will be viewing, this should be fully replaced. So
once you click on the download, you'll get one of our default.
Download software messages, follow the on-screen instructions.
And you'll have access to the software, place it at the proper Remote device,
wherever that may be and then install it. I'm not going to
download this right now and I'm not going to install this right now because I already have
it installed. So I'm going to show you that. Once you have that access that remote access
runtime installed, what does it look like? I'm going to go ahead and hit the little X on
the top right here. That'll bring me back to the remote access manager.
And effectively. Once you have that running on another computer, you will see something
of this nature. So I'm going to slide this on the screen.
This is what the report, the factory talk remote access looks like where it has network
connectivity. It is properly connected to the cloud
environment, and the first time you run it, it will give you a device ID
and a password. So on my Remote device,
I'm going to quickly remove this. That's the actual device will be plugging
back in. So, back on the Explorer, domain view I am going to
show you how to add this device. I'm going to put it in the contributors only pile for the
moment. So click the plus button, add device, add device
remotely
and looking at my Remote device which I have access to. At the moment
I'm going to just go ahead and punch him to eat unique ID
and the password for the moment.
And you see it actually retain the name, because this was previously part of this
domain, that device is now locked into this domain.
No other. No other person can grab it and put it in their domain. It is currently available
to us alone. So, the first thing I want to do is now that
I have this device here, I want to go ahead and give it a proper entitlement. I'm
bypassing some of the network information, some of the permissions and I'm going
straight to entitlements. Once on the entitlements, hit the plus button,
depending on how many runtime basic or Pro entitlements, you have,
you can select basic or pro in Here, I'm going to go ahead and select one of
the my Pro runtimes. That way I have access to this
and just to show you how fast and easy. This is
I have access to the subnetwork, the subnet of the actual endpoint device. If
you don't have that, sometimes you can get away with just interact
interactive access for the web only. I'm going to go ahead and VPN connect here.
And we'll talk about more features from there.
Currently connecting up with the VPN tools. Once this
new interface shows up, we'll have a number of options at our disposal both for
information and for accessing that remote resource.
So, we are currently connecting to one of the endpoint devices at this moment.
Connecting via vpn.
And here we have the endpoint window. So here we have the remote
desktop. This here is the actual desktop of the Remote
device. So I'm currently on my other
engineering workstation and this allows me to now, go ahead and play
with any of the tools that exist on that station. I'm using a pro device. So should I
if I wanted to connect with any endpoint devices that are
through the network here, I could actually open them up on my local resource and still
connect through as if this is a bridge network from a way in
Currently, I'm going to go ahead and showcase some of the other features here on the left.
So we can actually see the processes of that Remote device. If you were to just open up
application and processes here from the task manager,
this is effectively what we were running. These are the various services on the remote
resource. This is the Explorer. So if you want it to facilitate a file transfer to or
from that remote device, this has proper FTP, protocols.
We can also see what the connection stats are. This is the remote. This is my local
device over here on the right side, That's My Remote device. And here we have some Network
details. We have additional information on the Remote
device itself. And we have a log capturing, some of the
actions that have been taken or have been performed for the networking purposes.
I'm going to go ahead and now exit this for the moment.
You know what? I'm just going to keep the connection open for the moment. I'll just
leave it down here, but I want to explain some of the details
that are available on the left side navigation here.
So on the left side navigation, we have the domain view. This is the primary window
where you can configure a number of your remote endpoint devices and organize them in
the various folders. Should you want to create that structure in such a way,
we have a devices view here. This is actually a One-Stop shop for all devices that are
available within the system. Here we have the name of the assets,
whether it's online or offline. What VPN reachable IPs are available for either VPN
Survival for other VPN or not available, who has access recite. I'm sorry. This is
which file path. You have created. We have the device IP here, the MAC address,
and the runtime version. We have a map view here. This is not
automatically populated at this time. You must manually. Enter that back on the domain
view. But I have one resource here in Cleveland Ohio
and I have another resource that exists somewhere up in
the Milwaukee region. If you want to keep track of who is doing,
what within your factorytalk remote access environment, you can click on operations here
and you will have a time record for the targeted date range up here with various
filters on which device was edited in which way, by which user at which time and what
specific action was taken. So if you edit anything in here, a folder structure or
renamed adding a resource removing a resource, anything of that nature. It is
captured here for good traceability.
And then the connections down here, actually shows you,
which one of your users was connected to the remote resource.
When did they were when do they connect to that remote resource
resource, when do they disconnect and the total duration of their time.
And here, I don't have a lot of options. I'm just going to go ahead and extend the
range and reach of this. So now we have a much more interesting details here.
Here under the domain options. We have a couple of domain options here for if you want
to get a little more customizability or a little more traceability,
so we can require a common when a device connection ends that we, someone has to put
in a comment that says, Hi, I fix So, and so, have a nice day.
We can log all connection operations, we can require contact details for anybody.
Requesting assistance, more on that shortly. We could send email notifications for people
that need assistance and we can send email notifications from user
accounts. Here in the entitlements. This is more of a
one pan one pane of glass an area for all of your
entitlements here within the system. I have one resource
assigned, currently, but in total, I have 22 licenses, looks like 17
of them are pro licenses. This
includes the to, from the trial, period, but I'm still going through. And we have the
five Basics, and also tells you how long you have owned
the trial access here. And again, if you have a full-blown version
of this, how many days left are in support, Down here under Tools. We have a connection
settings. Once again, you'll need the remote on the remote access runtime tools.
This is what those are effectively. This is for our Advanced users who want to have more
control over their TCP connections down here in the device setup. We have how to
actually connect your stratix 4300. If you have a dual NIC card, this is much
easier. If you only have a single NIC card, one network card,
we recommend using the USB device, you can get both access to the remote access cloud,
and to be Stratix 4300 at the same time for additional details. This is a good time to
point to our online help. And the top right corner, click on online, help and you will
have additional information. So how to route, how to connect your and configure your
stratix
4300 remote access router, popping back in
We have. Under
we've already covered the device setup under here, we have the downloads, I showcase this
as the very first thing so you can actually get your hands on the software to install
your remote devices. To get you as your internet connectivity as quickly as
possible. And then we have logs. These are just
various data logs that occurred within this apparatus itself.
Once you have some assets currently configured
your engineers on site can actually request access or request help. So, right here, we
have a request assistance button. Let me show you where that came from.
Back in the domain view, you click on the particular resource in question,
here we have Some settings,
and one of those settings is device, operator controls submit an assistance request. So if
I take this off, you will see they no longer have that button
if I plug it back in. Give that option back, the request assistance occurs. So what does
it look like when someone actually request assistance someone at your
remote Site says, hey we have a problem. Let
me go ahead and get one of our local in one of our other Engineers that can Dart
between our systems. I want to request assistance. Yes. Thank you,
please. And thank you. Once you're here, you'll see. There's a
little red bell. So if you let's say we have a hundred assets
in here and you might miss that red bell. Well, thanks for filtering options up. Here,
we can see which devices are online and which devices are currently requesting
assistance that device. We just added has an engineer at
the local facility. That is saying, hey, I need assistance. Can you please help me
jumping back into the remote access? Here, we can cancel, we can come in here. Cancel,
request and say hello. How can I help you? And we have a chat window
here.
But how do we actually get additional users into the system? So that we know who the
remote engineer is logging in. Let me go ahead and minimize this for the moment.
I'm going to go ahead back to the factorytalk.
Hub, instance, I'm going to go ahead and invite someone. So, at this time, I'm going
to invite a user. Let me double-check to make sure she's not already in here.
Yes, let me go ahead and remove Jessica right now.
And then coming back over here to the hamburger menu, I'm going to go ahead and
invite her back to the system. So factorytalk remote access. I want to bring her a
contributor level. I'm going to go ahead and invite Jessica.
And then to show you what that looks like on her screen, I'm going to go ahead,
we're going to do a quick. Screen share. so, back to you, Jessica
Thanks Dominic so I am just going ahead and opening up the email that I received.
For you and then you'll see that we get an email from
the system from Factory talk hub from Dominic and it will tell me that I'm you invited and
we'll give me a couple options of different things I can do.
I'm going to go ahead and click on join now. So now I'm in Factory, talk Hub, and it took
me right to it. So I'll go ahead and sign in
with my.Rockwell login, because I've already got an account. And if you didn't,
you could go ahead and create a new account.
and then now, I will have access to
Don't just hang There it is Dom testing’s organization.
And I can go ahead and go to factorytalk remote access and go ahead
and log in. It's going to ask for my multi-factor
authentication. So I'll go ahead and put that in.
Continue. And now I will have access to
Dom's testing organization and you can see here that as a contributor level, I do have
some restrictions on the things that I can do and see within the domain. You can see that
here with the lock image and I'll hand it back over to Dominic.
Thanks, Jessica so display my screen just a little bit
longer, let's say I made an error and I wanted to
change her level of access. I can either come in here
and get her administrative access, which would give her access to everything or I
Could leave her as a contributor, Come back into the factorytalk, remote access
manager here at this location and change some of the permissions. So currently Jessica
would have access to both of these devices. But if I click on them immediately by
themselves, I actually cannot edit the permissions here because they are inherited
from a higher folder structure. So if I click on the folder structure here and say what
will the resources in here are accessible by my contributors. I want to give them both
access to logs alone for the administrative sign. And for the interactive
Access, I want them to be able to fully connect them to that resource.
I can give them that level of permission. If I make an error for any sort, I can either
remove it from the entire folder or I can move that
device by right-clicking use a move option, go up one level to the
pole. To the parent folders
click on the admin only move it to whatever folder I think is more
appropriate for that level of access and immediately revoke her access for that
resource protecting the asset from any unauthorized access
and with that, I believe we have a full demo of all the
availability options for factorytalk remote access.
So thank you for joining us on our on demand
session for factorytalk remote access. We hope you've enjoyed this information.