How to Send OPC UA Data to Azure or Amazon AWS
Making OPC UA data available on cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS involves bridging the gap between the OPC layer on the plant floor and the cloud-hosted database or storage service. OPC Expert handles this directly: it subscribes to OPC UA items on your local network, captures values using event-based or time-based archiving, and forwards the data to cloud destinations including Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and MongoDB. No custom middleware, no additional programming, and no separate cloud connector software is required.
Architecture: From OPC Server to Cloud
OPC Expert sits between your OPC servers and the cloud destination. It subscribes to OPC UA DA or OPC UA HA data from the OPC server running on or near your controllers, stores incoming values in a local buffer, and transmits them to the configured cloud endpoint. The local buffer is always present whether or not the cloud connection is active, which means data is never dependent on a live cloud connection being available at the moment of capture. This architecture follows a store-and-forward model that keeps the archive complete even during cloud maintenance windows or network interruptions.
Configuring the Cloud Destination
In OPC Expert’s archive setup, cloud platforms appear as destination options alongside SQL databases and CSV files. When you select Azure or AWS as the destination, the configuration screen prompts for the connection credentials and endpoint information specific to that platform. OPC Expert handles the data transmission to the cloud using the same event-driven capture logic it uses for local SQL archives: only changed values are transmitted when event-based mode is selected, which keeps bandwidth consumption and cloud storage costs proportional to actual process activity rather than to the number of tags times a fixed polling interval.
Security Considerations for Cloud Data Transfer
OPC Expert uses the security mechanisms built into the protocols and platforms it communicates with. For OPC UA, this includes the OPC UA security model with certificate-based authentication and optional encryption. For cloud platforms, it uses the authentication methods supported by the target service. OPC Expert also operates within your existing firewall configuration using a single configurable port for tunneled communication, which simplifies the network rules required to permit outbound data transmission from the plant network to cloud endpoints.
MQTT as an Alternative Path to Cloud
For environments that prefer to route data through an MQTT broker before delivering it to a cloud platform, OPC Expert includes a built-in MQTT broker, publisher, and subscriber. The IoT using OPC and MQTT with SparkplugB module allows OPC data to be published to an MQTT broker using the SparkplugB payload specification, which is widely supported by cloud IoT platforms including Azure IoT Hub and AWS IoT Core. This provides a standardized, low-bandwidth path to the cloud that is well suited to environments with limited WAN connectivity.
Relevant Tools
Archive OPC Data from OPC Expert supports direct archiving to Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and MongoDB in addition to local SQL and CSV destinations. It includes store-and-forward for cloud connections and event-based capture to control transmission volume. IoT using OPC and MQTT with SparkplugB from OPC Expert provides the MQTT-based path to cloud platforms, using SparkplugB for structured payloads and TLS encryption for secure transmission over unstable or wide-area networks.
Conclusion
Sending OPC UA data to cloud platforms is a supported, configurable destination in OPC Expert rather than a custom integration project. The store-and-forward architecture ensures the cloud archive remains complete regardless of connectivity conditions, and the choice between direct SQL-to-cloud archiving and MQTT-based delivery gives you flexibility to match the approach to your existing cloud infrastructure.