I'm going to show you how to collect the Windows
Event Logs. These logs are available on all
Windows Operating Systems. They act as a central repository
for the Operating System and other applications
to log events. Many PI System components
log their messages to the Windows Event Logs, including
the PI AF Server, PI Analysis
Service, PI Integrators, PI Connectors and more.
If your issue involves a PI Interface,
the PI Buffer Subsystem or the PI Data Archive, you'll have to
collect the PI Message Logs instead as shown in the previous
video how to collect the PI Message Logs.
Before you start, you'll need the following.
First you need to figure out which computer to gather the logs
from. This needs to be the computer
where the application having the issue is installed.
Next you need to decide the time-range from which you'll be collecting the
logs. Make sure that the time which your issue occurred
is included in the range you are collecting.
For example you can collect one day before and after
the time of your issue. Finally since the Windows Event Logs
contain multiple different log files, you'll
have to figure out which logs to collect. Before
we do an example let's look at the different types of
logs found in the Windows Event Logs. To view the Windows Event Logs
go to your start menu and type
event viewer. Go
ahead and open up this application.
The Windows logs are sorted under two categories
Windows Logs and Applications and
Services Logs. Let's expand
these two.
The Windows Logs folder contains logs
that track important events about the Operating System.
Under System you'll find messages about
when the computer and applications started, stopped or even crashed.
Under Security you'll find information
about which accounts attempted to login to the system
or access resources on the computer. The
Application logs will contain even more information
about when applications crash. Some applications
on the computer will also log all of their messages
to the Application log. However many other applications
write their messages to a dedicated log
file under applications and services. In this
case since we are logged onto a PI AF Server,
we have an AF log under applications and services.
Now for example,
let's say I'm having an issue with my PI AF Server,
the PI AF application service has
crashed sometime within the last 24 hours. We
are already logged onto the right computer which is the PI AF
Server. So which log files do we need to collect?
Of course we'll want to collect the AF log
since it will contain the last messages posted by the PI AF Server
before it crashed. But we'll also want to collect
the Application
log and the System log. Since these will contain more information
about the application crashed and also what else
was happening on the System when the issue occurred.
As you can see you often have to collect more than one log
file. To view and collect the Windows Event Logs,
simply select the log in the left pane.
If you are troubleshooting on your own, you can browse
through the messages in this pane here. Make sure that the
time of your issue is included in the date and time here.
To save the log, simply click on
save all events as in the right pane.
Make sure to give your log file a meaningful
name. Make sure
to also save your file as the default
event file type.
Finally select your display information and then you are done.
One last thing I want to point out is that
sometimes log files can be quite big.
For example you can see that the application and system
log are both 24 MB. So we might want
to filter these logs before we save them if we
can't send a file that's this big.
Let me show you how to do this. First select
the file and then you'll want to click on
filter current log.
To filter based on
time, select the first drop down menu and
select custom range. I want to collect the logs
from the past 24 hours. So I'll select
this from dropdown menu, select events
on and change the date to yesterday.
I can also change the time here
if I want to. Since I'm collecting for the last
24 hours, I'll keep my
to field to last event.
You can then save this filtered log by clicking here.
Once I've collected
all three log files, I'll be ready to
continue troubleshooting my issue and if necessary get help from
tech support.