What is the OPC UA Onboarding companion specification?

Companion specification · Tier 2

Onboarding

Version	1.05.04
Published	2025-01-08
Namespace	`http://opcfoundation.org/UA/Onboarding/`
Sector	Device onboarding

The device onboarding model, at 1.05.04 from January 2025. It addresses how a device is securely introduced into a network and issued credentials - the problem that makes certificate management painful at fleet scale.

Where it sits in the stack

A core-versioned utility model, related to the Global Discovery Server work in Part 12. It is infrastructure rather than machine data.

The types that matter

Type	What it carries
`(type inventory not confirmed)`	We have not verified the type inventory. Browse the released nodeset.

Using it on a real machine

Understand the problem it solvesManually trusting certificates stops scaling somewhere around the thirtieth device. Onboarding is the standards-based answer to that.
Look at it alongside GDSGlobal Discovery Server certificate management and device onboarding address adjacent parts of the same lifecycle.
Consider it before a large rolloutIf you are about to deploy a hundred devices, the time to think about onboarding is now, not after the first fifty manual trust operations.

What it gives you for OEE

No production data. It matters for OEE indirectly and significantly: certificate management is the practical schedule risk on any large collection rollout, and a device that cannot be trusted produces no data at all.

Try it free: No free public server exposes this model as far as we know. To see it you need a machine that implements it or a vendor demo. If you find a public endpoint, tell us and we will add it.

Gotchas

Infrastructure, not machine data. Do not look here for values.
Most relevant before a large rollout, when the manual approach has not yet failed.
Implementation support is limited relative to how useful this is.

Verify before you rely on this: We have not verified the type inventory or which products implement it. The type inventory on this page is deliberately short. We list only type names we are confident of and would rather publish five correct ones than twelve with four wrong. Browse a real server or the released nodeset for the complete list.

Related models

GDS DI Safety

Concepts on this page

Application instance certificate Trust list Global Discovery Server Certificate push vs pull

Once the machine speaks a companion spec, the OEE mapping is portable across vendors, which is the point at which analytics stops being a per-machine project.

See Jemba →

Last verified 7 September 2026 against OPC UA 1.05.07. Version and publication date read from the released nodeset. OPC UA Connect is an educational resource and is not affiliated with the OPC Foundation.