This video will demonstrate an upgrade to PI Buffer
Subsystem version 4.3 from API Buffer Server.
Let's go over some of the system
requirements. From the PI Live library, we can see
that PI Buffer Subsystem supports both 32 bit and
64 bit client and server Windows Operating Systems
starting from Windows Server 2003, SP2.
Any destination PI Data Archive Server is going to
need to be version 3.4.375 or
later. We always recommend running the latest
version for best performance. Therefore, it may not be
appropriate to upgrade to PI Buffer Subsystem
if you are buffering PI Interfaces that are on
non Windows platforms or are writing data to PI Data
Archive versions 3.4.370 or
earlier. So please make sure your system meets all of these
requirements before proceeding with the upgrade.
Finally, if you are configuring buffering
for PI API Interfaces, you'll need PI ICU
version 1.4.15 or later.
Configuring buffering for AF SDK or PI
SDK clients will require PI
AF Client 2014 or later or PI SDK
2014 or later. So let's take a look
at what the current configuration with my interface machine
is. From PI ICU,
we can see that I already have two PI Interfaces
configured and sending data. The first instance is
writing to Carbon which is the name of my two member
PI Data Archive Collective. The second instance is writing
to Graphite which is my standalone, independent
PI Data Archive Server.
Let's take a look at the buffering configuration. So within
tools, buffering,
we can see that the buffering option is enable
buffering with API Buffer Server.
Additionally, if we go to the buffered servers list,
we can see that all three of my PI Data Archive servers are
buffered. So that includes the two members of my
PI Data Archive Collective as well as the independent
PI Data Archive Server,
Graphite. Keep in mind that this is an upgrade, so the
services for the PI Interfaces will need to be stopped during the
upgrade. So it's important that you have the appropriate
downtime scheduled or you have interface failover
configured, so that the data downtime is minimized during the
upgrade.
OK, so
the install kit for PI Buffer Subsystem can be
found from the OSIsoft Tech Support
page at techsupport.osisoft.com
Once you are browser is there, you can go
to the downloads page and at the downloads
page, you can type in PI Buffer Subsystem
for the product name and click
search. So in this case, we're going to be
configuring buffering for PI API interfaces, so
we'll be downloading the PI Interface Configuration Utility
Install Kit version 1.4.16.79A.
Alright,
so I already have the install kit downloaded.
Let's go ahead and get started with
the upgrade.
OK, my install kit is saved in my D
drive Install Kits folder. So once I'm there, I'm going to right click
the install kit and run as administrator.
It'll then ask me for a location to
extract the installation files. So I'm just
going to put it into that same install
kits folder.
The installation splash screen shows me that
PI Buffer Subsystem is one of the modules that will
be upgraded.
You'll notice that the installation
actually prompts you and shows you which services
will need to be stopped for the upgrade.
So you'll notice here that both of my PI Interface
services are listed here. So once again, please make sure
before proceeding with the upgraded, that you have the appropriate
downtime scheduled or you have interface failover configured to minimize the data
downtime.
The final part of the upgrade
is this interactive upgrade wizard to help
finalize the configuration settings when upgrading
from API Buffer Server to PI Buffer Subsystem.
So you'll notice that on the
first screen, the upgrade
actually scans and detects all of the PI Interfaces
installed on the Interface machine. So we can see here that it has
detected both of my PI Interfaces, the
first instance writing to my PI Data Archive collective, and the
second instance writing to my independent PI Data Archive Server.
So I'm going to have both of the
check boxes checked because I want to configure PI Buffer Subsystem
for both interface instances.
Next, the upgrade wizard does a
connection test to make sure that PI Buffer
Subsystem can successfully connect and authenticate
to each of the PI Data Archive Servers.
So at the top, we can see that currently, the PI Buffer
Subsystem service account is running under the local system
account. So to follow the security
best practices, I'm actually going to change this to run under
a custom domain service
account. Now notice that this custom domain service
account is going to be added to the local administrators
group as this is a necessary requirement for the service
account that PI Buffer Subsystem runs
under. So we can see that the
connection tests are coming back with these security errors,
no access secure object.
Since we are upgrading from API Buffer Server, it's
good to take this opportunity to review the security
configuration on the PI Data Archive Server since much of it
probably will need to be changed when upgrading
from API Buffer Server. So for example,
with PI Buffer Subsystem, we can now use mappings and
it's highly recommended that authentication
with PI Data Archive Servers is now done through PI
mappings. So we are going to go through the configuration for
PI mappings here. At the bottom, we can see
that there is an option to create the mappings for us.
So we are going to choose the option PI
mapping and then when we click browse, it's going to open up a list of all of the
PI identities on the PI Data Archive Server.
So in this case, I already
have this PI Interfaces Buffers identity created, so I'm going to use
this as my identity for the
PI mapping. So once that's selected, all that I have to
do is click create.
That will create the PI mapping on the PI Data Archive
Server for the carbon
collective. So I'll want to do the same thing for the Graphite PI Data
Archive Server. So I'm going to click
browse and choose the PI identity I want
configured for the PI mapping.
And click create.
So once that's done, I can open up
PI SMT and check that all the rest of my
security configuration is correct on the PI Data Archive Servers.
So once PI SMT is
open, I have all three of my PI Data Archive
Servers selected and I'm going to go to security
and use the mappings and trust
plug-in. On the mappings tab, we can see that the PI
mapping was successfully created on all three of my
PI Data Archive servers. Additionally,
the PI identity is the same as what we
specified which is the PI Interfaces
Buffers identity. OK, so what other
security configurations are needed for this PI
identity? What we'll want to check is
first of all, at the database
security level for the PI Points
table, we need to make sure that that PI identity
has read access. So this is covered in this
case because I have PI
world given read access. So if you don't have PI world
listed here, you want to make sure the PI identity for your PI Buffer
Subsystem is listed to have read access at the
PI Point database security level.
Additionally, we want to make
sure that the security configuration is correct on all of the
individual points. So I'm going to open up the
Point Builder plug-in and select one of my
PI Interface points to show you what that looks like.
So within the security tab
with the PI Point, what we want to make sure is that the PI
identity that PI Buffer Subsystem is under, has
read access under point security.
So once again, this is covered by PI world here. If you don't have
PI world, make sure you have PI identity for PI Buffer Subsystem
is listed here to have read access.
Additionally, the PI identity for PI
Buffer Subsystem will need to have both read and write
permissions within the data
security tab. Alright, so now
I've confirmed all the security configurations for
PI Buffer Subsystem on my PI Data Archive
Server. But I can see that
within the upgrade wizard, I still have these security
errors where it's saying no access,
secure object. Unfortunately, this is a known issue
with the upgrade wizard that's planned to be fixed in a later version of
PI Buffer Subsystem. The issue is that even though I've changed
the service account for this custom domain service
account, the connection test is still using the local
system account.
So since I've already confirmed the security configurations on the
PI Data Archive Server themselves, I can safely
ignore these errors and
click next. The next
screen asks where you'd like to save the PI Buffer Subsystem
buffer queue files. So the recommendation here is to
choose the hard disk
which has the most available space but which is also not the
hard disk which hosts the operating system. So in this
case, I'm going to keep it the same because D drive has the most
available space and it also is not the operating
system disk drive.
The upgrade wizard then does a final
verification and we can see that everything here is
successful. So we can now exit the
upgrade wizard.
So now that the upgrade is finished, we can see that it has
brought back all of the services that were stopped for the
upgrade. So my two PI Interface services
are now started again. However,
notice now that PI Buffer Server is now listed as stopped and
disabled. And this is because we've switched from using
PI Buffer Server to PI Buffer Subsystem.
The final screen is the buffering manager
report which shows any errors, warnings and information
messages from the upgrade wizard. So in this
case, I didn't have any errors or warnings. However if you
did have any errors or warnings, they would be listed here.
And based on the error warning, you can take the appropriate
action. At the bottom, there is this option
to launch Buffering Manager
when setup completes. So I'm going to choose to uncheck that
box so I can show you later how to access Buffering
Manager if you did have this box unchecked or if you needed
to access Buffering Manager later. But you can leave the box checked
if you'd like to bring up Buffering
Manager right away. Alright, so now the upgrade is complete
and we can see that PI Buffer Subsystem was successfully
installed. So the first thing I probably will want to do is
make sure that I'm still receiving data
for the points from my PI Interfaces on this
machine. So back in SMT, I'm going to use the current values
plug-in now and do a search for some of the points
being written to from the PI Interfaces
on this machine. So I have
the points selected and I'm going to choose to
update them. And we can see that the PI
Points on all three of my PI Data Archive Servers are indeed
updating with live values. So it looks like the data is
good. But how can I tell that this data is
actually going to the PI Buffer Subsystem?
So as I mentioned earlier, what we can do is use
this new GUI tool called Buffering Manager.
So if you had the check box deselected during the
upgrade wizard, you can access Buffering Manager
from the PI ICU.
Once PI ICU is open, we
can go to tools,
buffering. So notice how going to tools
buffering no longer opens the traditional buffering configuration window,
but instead now launches the Buffering Manager. Buffering
Manager is a GUI tool that is new to PI Buffer Subsystem version
4.3. It's basically a dashboard
that shows the live health statuses of all of the
PI Data Archive Servers configured for buffering. Additionally,
it's also the central place to configure all the settings for
PI Buffer Subsystem. So what can we
see? So here on this initial
screen is the global level. So the global level shows all the
counters for all of the PI Data Archive Servers configured
for buffering all together. So we can see at the bottom
that I have my two logical
servers, logical meaning
basically either an independent PI Data Archive Server
or a PI Data Archive collective. And we can see
that the total events sent globally is
about 12,479 events.
So this is the total number of events being sent to all three of my
PI Data Archive servers. If I
wanted to see the events being sent for individual
PI Data Archives or PI Data Archive collectives,
I could choose which one I want to look at, at the bottom. So let's say I
want to look at the carbon PI Data Archive collective.
So at this level, it shows the counters for the
collective. And I can see for the PI Data Archive
collective, I've sent about 10,698 events.
And if I wanted to look at the individual members
themselves, I can do that by clicking on the member that I'm
interested in. And that will show me the event counters just for
that PI Data Archive collective member itself.
OK, so let's also
confirm that
the PI Buffer Subsystem service is running
under that custom domain service account that we
configured during the upgrade wizard. So
within the services applet, under PI Buffer Subsystem,
we can see that it is indeed
running as that custom domain service account.
OK, so we've confirmed that everything has been
upgraded and we're receiving data. And now the
upgrade from PI API Buffer Server
is complete. If you would like to configure
buffering for more PI API Interfaces,
please watch the Configure PI Buffer Subsystem
for PI API Interfaces video.