This video will demonstrate how to configure
PI Buffer Subsystem version 4.3 for PI API
Interfaces. The current state of my interface machine
is the same as at the end of the video, Installation
of PI Buffer Subsystem. So I already have PI Buffer Subsystem
version 4.3 installed, but it has not yet been configured.
If I open PI ICU,
we can see that I already have two PI Interfaces
configured, running and sending
data. So the first instance is writing to my two member
PI Data Archive collective named Carbon. And the second
instance is writing data to Graphite which is the name of an independent
PI Data Archive Server. Please keep in mind
that during the configuration, the services for
these PI Interfaces will need to be stopped. So make
sure you have either the appropriate downtime scheduled or you have interface
failover configured to mitigate the data downtime necessary
for the initial configuration. You
will also need to be logged in as local administrator
to follow along the steps in this video.
OK, so before we get started, what
exactly do we mean by PI API Interfaces?
Well, PI API is one of the data access protocols
available for the PI Data Archive Server.
It's already been deprecated for new products
but it's still very prevalent in most of our PI
Interfaces. SO as a general rule of thumb,
for PI Interfaces, you will want to configure PI API Buffering
to make sure that data being sent by those PI Interfaces
is buffered. One notable exception
to this rule is PI Batch Interfaces. PI Batch Interfaces
write data to the PI Data Archive Server
in a very special way. So generally they aren't
configured with buffering. Another thing to note is that
if your PI Interfaces write annotations
to your Data Archive Servers, you will also want to
configure PI SDK Buffering in addition to PI API
Buffering. So PI API Buffering will be covered
in this video and to configure PI SDK Buffering,
please watch the video Configure PI Buffer Subsystem
for SDK.
Alright, so let's go ahead and get
started. The first thing that we'll want to do
is to change the service account that the PI Buffer Subsystem
service runs under. So this is optional
but it's highly recommended that you follow this step to follow
security best practices. So I have the services
applet open and I can go down to PI Buffer
Subsystem and go to the properties.
Then I'll go to the logon
tab and enter the credentials for my custom
service account. Alright, so once that's
done, notice that the service is not
running yet. So it's set to manual and it's
stopped. So we don't need to do anything here because the new
installation wizard will take care of everything with the service for us. So please
make sure you don't start the service just
yet. OK, so once that's done, we
can begin the new installation wizard. And the
way we configure that is by going to
PI ICU Tools
Buffering. So an important thing to remember is when you are configuring
buffering for PI API Interfaces, you need to do it through PI
ICU. So since
PI API Buffering has not been configured
before, as I stated before, this will open up a new installation
wizard.
So once the new installation wizard has come
up, the first thing that it does is it actually scans the
machine for all of the installed PI Interfaces.
So we can see here that it's detected both instances
of my PI Interfaces and I can choose which
one of them I want to configure
for PI API Buffering.
So for the purposes of this video, I'm only going to select one instance
for now so that later on, I can show you
how to configure the other instance in case you've already gone through this new
installation wizard. So I'm going to have the first
instance selected and I'm going to click next.
I'll need to re-enter the
credentials for my custom domain service
account and note that this custom domain
service account is going to be added to the local administrators
group on the Interfaces machine. This is a necessary
pre-requisite for the servers account that PI Buffer Subsystem runs
under. The new installation wizard will then do a
connection test to verify that PI Buffer Subsystem
can both connect and authenticate to the PI Data Archive Server.
So we can see that it actually
returned with an error saying no
access to secure object. And this is because I have not yet
configured the security configuration on the PI Data Archive Server to
allow PI Buffer Subsystem to connect and authenticate.
However, notice that it did pick up
our custom domain service account. So
what we can do is using this service account, we can now
configure a PI mapping on the PI Data Archive
Server. So at the bottom, what I can do is
make the selection for PI mapping
and then click browse. Browse
will bring up a list of all the PI identities on the PI Data Archive
Server. I already have this PI
identity PI Interfaces Buffers created beforehand, so
I'm going to choose this for my PI mapping.
Once that's selected, all I have to do is
click create. It will then retry the connection
test using that mapping that we just
created and we can see that it now returns with a
green checkmark and success.
Furthermore, we can see that the authentication method was using
SSPI or Windows Integrated Security. And that it
did get the PI identity that we chose
for it. So let's just verify all of the security
configurations on the PI Data Archive itself. So I have
PI SMT open here and I'm going to
connect to both members of my PI Data Archive
collective. So underneath security
in the mappings and trusts plug-in, I
can see that it did create the mapping on both members
of my collective for this custom domain service
account.
Additionally, we can see that it did get the identity
that we specified in that new installation
wizard. So what other security
configuration is necessary?
Well, at the database security level, we need to
make sure that the PI Buffer Subsystem
Servers account PI Identity, has read access
at the PI Point database security level. So this is covered
here by PI world. If PI world were not
listed here, then I would need to make sure that my
PI identity, PI Interfaces Buffers, had read access
at this level. Additionally we need to make sure
that the security is configured properly
on each of the points that PI Buffer Subsystem is going
to write to. So let me just bring up one of the points that's
being written to from one of the interfaces on this
machine.
If we go to the security
tab, basically what's necessary here
is that the identity also needs to have read
access within the point security. So once again this is covered by
PI world. If PI world were not here, I'd have to have
PI Interfaces Buffers listed here with read access.
And within data security, we need
to give that PI identity both read and write
permissions. So we can see that that's already done.
So basically the security configuration looks good on the PI Data
Archive Server.
So on the next screen, the new
installation wizard wants us to choose the location where the PI Buffer
Subsystem queue files are going to be saved. The recommendation here
is to choose the disk drive with the most available
disk space but which is also not the operating
system disk drive. So in this case, I'm going to choose to put the
buffer queue files on E drive since it has the most
available space and also does not have the operating system
installed on it.
The new installation wizard does one final verification and we
can see that I got all green checkmarks, the service was
started up successfully, it was able to connect.
And the upgrade to PI Buffer Subsystem is now complete.
So we can exit the new installation
wizard. It's going to bring up this GUI tool
called Buffering Manager. But we'll get back to that in a
little bit. So within PI ICU,
if I just load up that interface,
we can see now that there is a box called
buffering status and for that PI Interface that I just configured
buffering for and now it says on which says
that it's buffered. However, if I go to my second
instance, we can see that for this second
instance, the buffering status will say off. And that's just because
during the new installation wizard, I had it
deselected. And all I have to do to configure it for buffering
now is to click this enable button.
This enable button will bring up the add new
server wizard, so that I can configure the buffering
for this other PI Data Archive
Server, Graphite. So it's basically going to be the same procedure. We're
going to create a mapping for it on the Data Archive Server,
so that it can connect and authenticate using
that custom service account. And once that's
done, then all we have
to do is restart the
interface. So this is the difference between configuring it through the new installation
wizard and through the add new server
wizard. So if we
go back to that instance
going to Graphite, we can see that the buffering status
says on. However, I know that it's not being
buffered because it has not been restarted yet. A
restart is always necessary when
running PI Interfaces for Buffering.
So the way that I can confirm this is going to Buffering
Manager. So Buffering Manager is a new GUI tool
introduced in PI Buffer Subsystem version 4.3
It's basically a dashboard
that shows you health and status updates for all of the PI Data Archive Servers
configured for buffering. Additionally, it's the
central place where you can go to change all of the configuration settings
for PI Buffer Subsystem. So on this
initial screen, this is what's called the global page
and it shows you all of the statuses and
counters for PI Buffer System globally.
So this would include all of my PI Data Archive collectives and PI Data
Archive servers. So we can see that
globally, PI Buffer Subsystem has already sent
7712 total events across all of my
PI Data Archive Servers. If I wanted to see the counters
just for my PI Data Archive collective, I can choose the
collective down at the bottom.
And we can see that at the collective
level, it has sent about 8490
events and if I wanted to drill down further,
I can go to a specific member and see how many events
were sent just to that PI Data Archive collective member itself.
So going back to the global page,
if I go to the Graphite PI Data Archive
Server, we can see that it has zero
total events sent even though the PI Interface
is running. So as mentioned earlier,
because the Interface was not restarted after configuring
PI Buffer Subsystem for it, so all
we have to do is restart the Interface within
PI ICU. So keep in mind that if you don't
have Interface failover
configured, this may result in some data loss while
the Interface is restarting.
So now that we've restarted the Interface, we can see that
there are now events being sent through
PI Buffer Subsystem for the PI
Graphite Data Archive
Server. So one other important thing to know about
Buffering Manager is that you either need to be
a local administrator or
within a Windows group called PI Buffering
Administrators to make configuration changes within
Buffering Manager. So this
PI Buffering Administrators user group
is installed on
the machine when you install PI Buffer Subsystem
version 4.3. So I can see this group by going
to Manage my Computer and go into the
local users and groups. Within here, I can see there is a
group called PI Buffering Administrators.
So you can add users here who you'd like
to be able to make configuration
changes to PI Buffer Subsystem
but who you may not necessarily want to add to
the local administrators group.