Edge deployment and data flow scenarios

In this section, we are going to analyze five different options for connecting the edge to the industrial data sources mentioned previously, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. The five options are the following:

• Edge on fieldbus
• Edge on OPC DCOM
• Edge on OPC Proxy
• Edge on OPC UA
• OPC UA on the controller

These five options do not cover all possible scenarios of edge deployment in a plant network to gather data from a factory, but they are the main ones; all other possibilities can be derived from these or are combinations of them. In this section, we aren't going to take into account cyber security requirements or constraints, as the ICS standards and their associated best practices will be covered in Chapter 5, Applying Cybersecurity. Let's start by taking a look at the first option—the edge on fieldbus setup.