- Critical OT & Industry 4.0
- Aveva Pi
Case Study: Aveva Pi Historian OT to IT Convergence for Grid Analytics
National Electricity Grid in ASEAN
Replicate up to 50,000 PI tags per second without performance degradation
Preserve PI archives and historical data integrity during replication
Maintain strict OT–IT isolation while enabling continuous historian synchronization
Ensure zero unplanned downtime and extremely low maintenance in critical grid operations
Need / Problem / Context
Protecting grid operations while enabling Aveva PI data analytics
A national electricity grid operator needed to expose operational data from multiple distributed OT PI Historian servers to a centralized IT data lake used for analytics, performance monitoring, and long-term operational optimization.
While the analytics platform required continuous access to large volumes of time-series data, the OT environment hosting the PI servers controlled critical grid operations and had to remain strictly isolated from the corporate IT network. Any direct connectivity would have introduced unacceptable cyber risk and potential disruption to real-time operations.
The challenge was therefore to replicate historian data from multiple OT Aveva PI servers to a central IT PI server at high throughput — up to 100,000 tags per second — while preserving the integrity of PI archives, maintaining uninterrupted grid operations, and ensuring a strict one-way security boundary between OT and IT environments.
Solution Deployed
To enable secure and high-throughput replication of historian data while preserving strict separation between OT and IT environments, Cyberium deployed a resilient unidirectional gateway architecture. The solution ensures continuous data synchronization from distributed OT PI servers to the centralized IT environment, while maintaining operational stability and eliminating any inbound connectivity risk.
2x OWA 3U pack @ 1 Gbps
Two security gateways were deployed to sustain continuous high-volume historian replication while preserving strict separation between OT and IT environments.
MICA Aveva Pi Agent
A specialized PI integration component enables seamless synchronization of historian data while preserving archive integrity and tag structure.
How It Works — Architecture Overview
Outcomes & benefits
The new architecture provides a stable and efficient historian replication environment, simplifying operations while significantly improving system reliability and reducing overall operational costs.
50% reduction in Aveva PI licensing cost
Historian backfill capability restored missing data when gaps occurred, ensuring continuous and reliable operational history
Supported regulatory compliance for a national electricity grid by enforcing a provable one-way security boundary
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