This driver is a simple driver. It provides additional functionality to enable ClearSCADA to interface with specific supported devices using a particular protocol. To interact successfully with such devices, you need to:
- Install and run the driver
- Ensure that the driver is licensed
- Configure the required database items and settings on the driver
- Ensure that the database items (and any database items on which they depend) have valid, saved, configuration and are 'In Service'.
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is an Internet protocol that is used for synchronizing the system clocks on computer systems. The ClearSCADA NTP Monitor Driver monitors the accuracy of such synchronization.
We recommend that you run NTP, or an equivalent time synchronization mechanism, on your ClearSCADA system. This will synchronize the system clocks of the computers on your system.
If required, on systems that are running NTP, you can also run the ClearSCADA NTP Monitor Driver and configure NTP Monitor items in the database to enable you to assess the accuracy with which those system clocks are being synchronized.
This Guide to the NTP Monitor Driver explains:
- How to configure NTP Monitor-specific features and items in the ClearSCADA database (see Configuring NTP Monitor Devices in ClearSCADA).
- The stratum ranking that affects the accuracy with which system clocks are synchronized (see Understanding NTP Stratum Ranking and how this Affects Clock Accuracy).
- NTP Monitor-specific aspects that may be of interest to system administrators and engineers when investigating unexpected system behavior (see NTP Monitor Specific Status Display Attributes).
NOTE: There are no driver-specific pick actions for database items on this particular driver. However, users with the required privileges can add custom pick actions to a database item by using the User Methods tab on the relevant configuration Form (see Using the User Methods Tab to Define Custom Actions in the ClearSCADA Guide to Core Configuration). See a system administrator for the documentation associated with such custom actions (also known as ‘methods’).
NOTE: On the Modules tab of the ClearSCADA Server Status Tool, this particular driver is listed as the NTP driver. The logging options that are available to the driver are common to many simple drivers—for information, see Driver Log File Options that are Common to Many Simple Drivers in the ClearSCADA Guide to Simple Drivers.
For information on running NTP (as oppose to the NTP Monitor driver) and on synchronizing system clocks using NTP, see the NTP website (http://www.ntp.org).