*** Recall of Citect SCADA 2018 / 2018 R2 Updates (July - October 2020)

Hi everyone, 

It's with regret that I share that we have identified a regression in recent Citect SCADA Monthly Updates that can affect the operational view of Alarm information including Alarm Summary, Alarm Counts, and other Alarm-related views, and it’s important that we notify our customers who could potentially be affected.

We have shared this message with potentially affected customers who have downloaded any of the following Monthly Updates;

  • Citect SCADA 2018 Update 22 (Jul 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 Update 23 (Aug 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 Update 24 (Sept 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 Update 25 (Oct 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 R2 Update 08 (Jul 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 R2 Update 09 (Aug 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 R2 Update 10 (Sept 2020)
  • Citect SCADA 2018 R2 Update 11 (Oct 2020)

 

The set of steps that produces this issue is complex, and involves systems including Alarm Redundancy, a large number of Clients, and events which are causing the Alarm Servers to switch roles and Display Clients to switch their connection. This can occur with cases of Domain Users and/or local Citect users. Most concerning, the occurrence of this can appear to be random, with the outcome being that the Alarm Counts, Alarm Summary and/or Alarm view components may fail silently. 

With our strongest recommendation we advise the following actions;

  1. If you haven’t yet implemented any of these Updates, postpone the installation.
  2. If you have implemented any of these Updates, uninstall these Updates and roll-back your implementation to the June 2020 Update, available from the AVEVA Knowledge & Support Center website at https://softwaresupport.aveva.com/. The Uninstallation process needs to be performed individually for each Update listed above.
  3. These Updates should be considered “recalled”; please delete any local copies so they’re not accidentally installed in future.
  4. If you have shared any of the above Updates with someone else, please also share this message with them.

 

For a Redundant configuration, our recommended order would be to first roll-back Primary Servers (across all Clusters, if required), followed by Clients, and finally any Standby Servers.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the roll-back procedure for your Citect SCADA system, please reach out to your local Distributor and/or AVEVA Support team for specific advice – they will be your best contact for any questions.

Our investigations into the root cause of this issue are ongoing, and we will be publishing a new Update to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I’m not yet able to forecast when a new Update might be available.

We have also taken the decision to delay the release of the November Update for both Citect SCADA 2018 & 2018 R2 versions as we prioritise the investigation and resolution of this issue, which is our highest development priority. I’ll provide further updates when I have more news regarding this investigation and the availability of a new Update.

I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

Kind Regards,

Brad Shaw
Product Manager – SCADA/HMI

Parents
  • In some cases where the rollback of the update is not possible or not desirable, a temporary alternative is to create a workaround mechanism to restart the Standby Alarm Server every hour automatically. You can put in place this temporary workaround till the newer patch is released.
    The applicable workaround is:

    1) For a multi-process system, add an event that will execute the ServerRestart("<AlarmServerName>","<ClusterName>"). Enable this event in the Standby Alarm Server process exclusively.
    For more info see the help: Cicode Programming Reference > Cicode Function Categories > Server Functions > ServerRestart.
    2) For a single-process system, add an eventProcessRestart(). Enable this event in the Standby Server machine exclusively.
    For more info see the help: Cicode Programming Reference > Cicode Function Categories > Miscellaneous Functions > ProcessRestart.
Reply
  • In some cases where the rollback of the update is not possible or not desirable, a temporary alternative is to create a workaround mechanism to restart the Standby Alarm Server every hour automatically. You can put in place this temporary workaround till the newer patch is released.
    The applicable workaround is:

    1) For a multi-process system, add an event that will execute the ServerRestart("<AlarmServerName>","<ClusterName>"). Enable this event in the Standby Alarm Server process exclusively.
    For more info see the help: Cicode Programming Reference > Cicode Function Categories > Server Functions > ServerRestart.
    2) For a single-process system, add an eventProcessRestart(). Enable this event in the Standby Server machine exclusively.
    For more info see the help: Cicode Programming Reference > Cicode Function Categories > Miscellaneous Functions > ProcessRestart.
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