In this video we'll be planning a PI Server
upgrade to version 2016. Before we
start upgrading, it's important to consider our current and our planned
architecture and versions, so we know what
upgrade procedure to take. The most important consideration to
make is what version of the PI Server we are currently running.
In my PI System Management
Tools and in Operations, I'll look at the PI
version. Here I can see
that the current version I'm running is 3.4.380.70.64
bit.
It's important to look this up because
there are some requirements to upgrade to PI Server 2016,.
We have to be running version
3.4.375 or later.
And we have to be running a 64 bit version.
Now we can see that I'm running a version later
then 3.4.375 and I'm running the
64 bit version of
that. Now if you are required to make an intermediate
upgrade before you make it to PI Server 2016 because either you have
a version before 3.4.375 or you have
a 32 bit version. I'll recommend
you to look at KB00530.
By searching on our tech support
website, you'll find this and it'll instruct you with the best way
to upgrade your version into the minimum requirements
to finally upgrade to PI Server 2016.
The last requirement I'll talk about to
upgrade to PI Server 2016 is that we need an AF Server
on the network. Prior to
version 2010, the PI Server did not require
an AF Server on the network. But since 2010,
there has to be an AF Server on the network in order to upgrade or install
a PI Server.
Now I know I
don't have an AF Server on the network right now.
So I'm going to have to install one as part of my upgrade process.
In order to better understand
what the AF Server is and why we need one,
I'll pull up a slide.
Before PI Server 2010,
the PI Server stood on itself as the Data
Archive. Since PI Server 2010, we've renamed
the PI Server the Data Archive because the PI
Server is now going to be more than just the Data Archive
component. The PI Server will also encompass
this other piece called the AF Server.
And the AF Server itself is comprised of
two components, a SQL Database that has to be
hosted on a Microsoft SQL Server as well as
an AF Service, servicing that database.
So now in order to install or upgrade a PI
Server past version 2010,
we'll first make sure that we have to have a SQL Server on the network.
And then install an AF Server. And then finally we'll be able to upgrade
or install our Data Archive.
So now that we have a better
idea about the PI Server and its individual
components, let's look up our Live Library where we can see
our prerequisites
for these parts. And we'll navigate to our
LiveLibrary.OSIsoft.com
And here in PI Server,
we'll find our PI Server 2016 guide.
So I'll find the overview in
PI Server installation, the installation upgrade
guide, the welcome overview
and then the PI System components. Now here we
can see which what used to be the PI Server is now
the PI Data Archive and the AF Server together.
So as you can imagine
with our PI Data Archive and our PI AF Server
making up this new PI Server definition,
there can be a couple different ways we can configure these
two components. Here in the PI
Server and SQL Server configuration options,
we have 3 different examples of how you might
architect your PI Server.
A small PI System consisting of 10,000 or fewer
assets or 25,000 or fewer PI Points
might look something like
this with your PI Data Archive, your AF Server
and your SQL Server all on the same machine
running SQL Server Express.
For larger more high performance PI
Systems with more than 10,000 assets,
you might want to move your AF and
SQL Database all the machine with your PI Data Archive.
And you might have your PI Data Archive
on its own machine or even a collection of
machines and this configuration would require
standard or enterprise SQL Server licenses.
Finally
a distributed highly available PI System might look something like
this. And this is for load balancing and redundancy.
So now that we have a better idea of how we are going
to structure our PI System I'm going to choose
the small PI System for this
upgrade. So I'll have my AF Server, my PI Data Archive
and my SQL Server all on the same node.
Let's verify that
this system I'm going to install everything on
meets our requirements.
Here in the Upgrade a PI Data Archive Sever,
in the phase one pre upgrade section, we'll confirm
our system requirements.
Here in step 7 there is a link to
system requirements. And here we'll learn that for a
PI Data Archive 2016,
the PI Data Archive component requires
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later.
So I meet that requirement.
And it's important if you don't have an AF Server yet that you verify
that your machine meets the hardware and system
sizing requirements. And you can download
this PI System sizing recommendation spreadsheet to confirm that.
I've already done that. So I'll move on
and make sure that I have the PI AF Server
requirements. And I can see here
that those are in the PI AF Release Notes 2016.
So I've already downloaded those, so why don't
we go to my C drive
and in my PI Install folder, they are right here.
And here in the Operating Systems section we'll see that the
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is a valid
operating system for the AF Server.
And I want to use SQL Server 2012
64 bit for my AF Server.
And I can use the Express version of that.
And scrolling down
a little bit further is a
security requirement. So to run the AF
SQL script execution feature which is
part of the AF Install Kit, I'll need to run the AF Install Kit
as a user with a sysadmin connection to
my SQL Server.
If that's not possible or if you have a policy
against running Install Kits as a SQL Server sysadmin,
advise your
SQL Database administrator to follow this guide
in installing or updating an AF SQL
Database manually. So I'll meet all of those
requirements. The next thing we'll do
because we are adding an AF Server to our network is make
sure that the networking is going to work out.
So here in a new tab, I'll navigate to
TechSupport.OSIsoft.com
and I'll find a
KB,
KB 2820OSI8.
And this KB will guide us through
which firewall ports we should open on our PI Server.
So I'll scroll down past the
PI Server components because if you already have a PI Server,
it's very likely that those are already working.
And here we are more concerned about the AF Server components.
So just make sure that these will be opened so that your
AF Server is able to reach everything it needs to on the network.
So once all of this is set, we'll go to our
TechSupport.OSIsoft.com website
and begin downloading our Install Kits.
So I'll now go to the
Data Archive Install Kits
and download
the PI Data Archive 2016 Install Kit.
And to download it we'll click this button here
and follow all the instructions. I've already downloaded this
Kit so I'll move to the AF Server components.
Back in downloads,
the AF section is right here.
And I'll download the PI Asset Framework
AF Server 2016 Install Kit by clicking this
button. I'll also download the SQL Server
Express 2012 with Tools 64 bit by
clicking this button.
It's important to note that if you already have a SQL Server on the
network that you intend to use, you don't
have to download this part of the Kit. It's also
important to know that if you are downloading this Kit and you intend to
run it, you'll install .NET Framework
4.5 and that's likely going to require
a restart of your system. So make sure that you
schedule this upgrade with server downtime. It's also
important to download the PI Analysis Service 2016 Install Kit.
To make sure the AF
Server has all the functionality that it was designed to.
The last thing we'll download on this
page is down here in the white paper
section, we'll download the guide on installing
the SQL Server 2012 Express for PI Server
white paper. And this will guide us through any
questions we might have when we are actually installing
the SQL Server.
I've already downloaded all of my Install Kits,
so now it's time to make sure we can run them.
So it's required that we run all of our Install Kits
as a local administrator. So down
here in my Server
Manager,
under the configuration
section and local users and groups, we'll just
make sure that I'm in the administrators group.
And that's my gamercer account. So we know that I'm a local
administrator on this machine.
It's also important to make sure that our PI Server is
healthy before we attempt to upgrade it.
Upgrading an unhealthy PI Server could cause unexpected behavior
and it's always easier to troubleshoot one thing at a time.
So the first thing we'll
check is in the message logs,
I'll search for the
last day of messages
and anything that's a warning or more severe.
There seems to be only one warning
about running low on resources yesterday morning
but it doesn't seem to be recurring.
The next thing I'll look at is my current data. So in my
data, current data, I'll pull in some process
values of my current system. So searching
for Point Source OPC
I'll pull in some
PI Points.
And hitting play,
I can see that all of my data is updating.
So I know that there is current data reaching the PI Server.
Next we'll make sure that
those events are actually being archived by the PI Server.
In the Snapshot and Archive Statistics,
we'll hit play again
And here we'll make sure that our archived events and our events sent to
queue are increasing at similar rates. We can see that
in this last snapshot, I've had
29 more archived events and 29 more
events sent to queue. So it's likely that any events
in my event queue are also making it to
my archive files. We can also see here that
if I scroll down a little bit,
there is currently
0 events in my queue.
So we verified that any data
making it to the PI Server is also making it to the archive
files. What we'll do next is we'll check our
interface nodes to make sure when our server goes
down during the upgrade process that we won't lose any data
because we can buffer it. So flipping over to my
interface machine,
I'll open my ICU
and selecting
my interface
we can see that it's currently running and sending
data to the PI Data Archive.
I'm going to check the version of the Buffer Subsystem
first.
It's important to do this
so here in my programs and
features, I can see
that my PI Buffer Subsystem is
running 4.5.0.817
So there should be no problems
there. Now it's important to make sure that
my buffer is actually working. So if I'm running
PI Buffer Subsystem 4.3 or
late, here in tools we can click on
buffering and in
my Buffering Manager, we can see
that there is no issues buffering right
now. I've got an ample amount of days, estimated buffer
capacity. So we won't run out of disk space.
There is currently 0 events stuck from my
buffer queue and we can see here that I'm getting about
26 events per second being sent to my PI Data Archive.
So that number is consistent with
what I expect as my data rate. So I'll say
that my buffering is working. If you aren't
running PI Buffer Subsystem 4.3 or later,
you can still check the buffer queue. It will be in a different way. So
I'll show you that in my
command prompt,
I'll run it as administrator.
And I'll navigate to my PI Home
directory, slash Bin.
And I'll run
pibufss -qs
And here after letting it refresh
a couple of times,
we'll see that every refresh we get about
100 total event reads and 100 total event writes.
This means that any data getting read
by the buffer is also getting written by the buffer.
So data is flowing through the buffer with no problem
and there is currently 0 events stuck in the buffer queue.
Now it's critically important
to repeat this procedure on all of your interface
nodes to make sure that all of your interfaces will
buffer when the PI Server goes down during an upgrade.
Since I only have this one interface machine, I'll say that
all of my interfaces are buffering and move back
to my PI Data Archive.
So here back on my PI Data
Archive or PI Server machine, it's good
practice to have a fresh backup before we start upgrading.
So w'll click on our operations
and backups section and selecting our
PI Server, we can see here that we are running
nightly backups. So I'll run a second backup
here and I'll only include
the primary archive because all the other
archives were backed up last night. But I'll backup everything
else to a new
directory in my backups under
PI Backups.
And I'll add a folder called
Pre
Upgrade Backup.
Alright so it looks like
that is successful.
So far in this video we've planned out our
expected upgrade PI Server architecture. Verified
that we've met all of the software version requirements and confirmed
that during the upgrade process, we'll be buffering our
interface to prevent any data loss during the
procedure. The next steps will be to install
the SQL Server locally and then install the AF Server
and then finally we'll upgrade our PI Data Archive to version
2016. The next video in the
series, we'll walk through a SQL Server installation.
But if you already have a SQL Server on the network that you intend to
use, you can move ahead to the
Upgrade to PI Server 2016 Full Walk Through video.