Vault specifications
The technical detail behind Vault 0.1: platform, protocols, storage, data out, security and what has been measured.
- Platform
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Runs as a Windows service (automatic start, restart on failure, pre-shutdown handling) or as a portable Vault.exe from a folder.
- Install
- 5.5 MB setup program, an MSI for IT deployment, or a portable zip. No .NET runtime, Java or database to install.
- OPC UA
- Client with subscriptions of up to 500 monitored items each, server limits negotiated and reported, per-signal sampling rates, optional server-side deadband, browse-and-tick signal picker, reconnect with Republish recovery of lost notifications, source, server or local timestamps.
- OPC UA security
- None, Sign, Sign & Encrypt. Basic256Sha256, Aes128_Sha256_RsaOaep, Aes256_Sha256_RsaPss. Certificates trusted in both directions; user name and password stored encrypted by Windows (DPAPI).
- Modbus TCP
- Holding and input registers, coils and discrete inputs. Block reads of up to 125 registers; 16, 32 and 64-bit integers and floats in four word orders; scale and offset; unit IDs; poll groups; heartbeat staleness; register-map CSV import.
- Capacity
- No licence limit on signals. Tested at 3,000 signals at one second; collection and storage use 0.5–0.65 % of one CPU core at that rate.
- Storage
- Write-ahead log synced every second by default (configurable down to every batch). Lossless compressed chunks (delta-of-delta timestamps, XOR and decimal floats) in one file per day, week or month. Each sealed file is integrity-checked and hashed with SHA-256; each chunk carries a CRC-32.
- Time and quality
- UTC timestamps to the nanosecond and a quality code on every value; times are shown to people in local time.
- Compression
- None unless chosen per signal: on change, deadband (absolute or % of span) or swinging door. Gaps and quality changes are never compressed away.
- Disk management
- Warns at 80 % full, removes the oldest sealed files from 90 % down to 85 %, halts collection at 95 % with the gap marked. The last seven days are never removed.
- Data out
- Raw, aggregated (minimum, maximum, mean and count per interval) or interpolated. CSV, Parquet, PNG, PDF. HTTP/JSON API with a bearer token. Grafana JSON data source with gaps as nulls and events as annotations.
- Alarms
- High, low, rate, bad quality, stale and expression rules with hold time, hysteresis, severity and acknowledgement. Notification by SMTP e-mail through a site relay, HTTP webhook or a command.
- Reports
- PDF reports on request or on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule, with statistics, charts with gaps and limits, notes and events. Missed reports are made up after downtime.
- Users and audit
- Answers on the PC itself only until people are added. Viewer, operator and administrator roles; PBKDF2-hashed passwords; HttpOnly session cookies; brute-force braking; audit events for every sign-in and change. TLS through a reverse proxy.
- Viewer
- Any current browser. Desktop and tablet layouts, dark and light themes, kiosk mode. No client licence.
- Backup
- Scheduled backups with verified sealed files; restore refuses to run under a live Vault and verifies every file it copies.
Measured
From the evaluation builds. Conditions are given with each figure; how Vault is tested explains the methods.
DocumentVault test record
Release0.1 evaluation
Signalsup to 3,000 at 1 s
Status5 pass, 3 open
| Ref | Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| T-01 | Hard kill under load400 crash-test runs against the real program, including 339 hard kills while collecting, starting and shutting down and 56 clean stops, each followed by a full check of every stored value | 0 acknowledged values lostWorst loss at a kill: 39 ms at a 20 ms log sync on an idle rig; 71 ms with another process loading the CPU. Linux test rig; process kills, not power cuts. | PASS |
| T-02 | Worst-nightmare fault injectionA test server sending known values through a proxy that drops, stalls and corrupts traffic; full disks, bit rot, 140 kills, hostile queries | 0 wrong, 0 duplicated, 0 gaps unmarked2,942,223 values compared with what was sent. 26 defects found and fixed along the way. | PASS |
| T-03 | Windows soak2,500 signals from a simulated battery site over OPC UA (security None), one Windows service | 6.9 days without a restart632 M samples collected in that run (1,058 a second on average). All 675 M samples in the eight day files decoded and checked against their hashes: 0 errors. Seven 30-second stalls caused by an OPC UA library fault were stored as marked gaps (99.96 % captured). The fix is verified in a proxy test; a soak re-run on the fixed build is still to do. | PASS |
| T-04 | Load3,000 tags at one second, no deadband, release build | 0.5–0.65 % of one CPU core2.8 GHz Xeon core. About 0.6 GB a day of raw one-second data. | PASS |
| T-05 | Year-long queryOne tag, a year of one-second data (31.5 million samples), read at one-day intervals | 0.09 sChunk summaries answer most of the query without decoding. | PASS |
| T-06 | Real PLCsA real Siemens S7-1500 and a Phoenix Contact PLCnext, over OPC UA with Sign & Encrypt, on an evaluation tester's bench | In progressResults will be published here, dated, as they come in. | OPEN |
| T-07 | Power cut on WindowsThe plug pulled on a Windows panel PC under load, five times, each followed by a full check | Not yet runProves the disk honours the log sync, which a process kill cannot. | OPEN |
| T-08 | 30-day soak3,000 signals at one second on the target panel PC, tracking memory, handles and disk | Not yet run | OPEN |
Figures from Vault 0.1 evaluation builds, September 2026. The crash, fault, load and reconnect tests ran on a Linux test rig; the soak ran on Windows. Open tests stay listed until they pass.
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