In this video we'll be going over common problems that can happen when setting up
PI Vision to be accessed from a new DNS name. Three of the common problems are:
an internal server error when selecting databases in the AF hierarchy
or nothing will be shown here
and a 401 internal server error when trying to access PI Vision through the new DNS name.
Now to start troubleshooting we want to check what the PI Vision logs are saying
all PI Vision messages are written to the windows event viewer log. PI Vision messages are written to
the application log and for this type of accessing issue it is going to be written to the OSIsoft
search folder and from there inside that we have the admin and to see the more details of the error
we want to enable the debug log. To do that we'll go view, show analytic and debug logs and then
click enable.
Once it is enabled we will generate the error again and it will populate the log.
As you can see we are getting an SSL error this is because when configuring PI Vision to be accessed
from a DNS name it needs to be a domain signed or a third-party certificate and not a self-signed
certificate you can see we are using their self-signed certificate from this error here
you will have to talk to your IT team and ask them to generate a certificate for you to use
this certificate will need to have in the subject alternative names and entry for all
aliases including the new DNS name you wish to access PI Vision from.
There will be a link below for more information about the certificates
Once you have the certificate you will need to change it in the PI Web API admin utility tool.
From here since all this should be pre-filled in you will have to hit next until the certificate
section you will then select change and change the certificate to your new one as you can see the
subject alternative names are filled in including the new DNS name which for mine is PI Vision
We then select next until the submit URL section
Here we see that it is set to the machine name
and not the new DNS name. For now we'll leave this as is and finish running through the
configuration.
After that is completed you'll have to perform an IS reset to apply the certificate.
We could then navigate to PI Vision and see that the certificate error
is gone but we still get an internal server error.
From here we go back to our event viewer into the message logs and now we see
another error which is just the internal server error.
Since we are still seeing the internal server error we need to check to see if our PI Vision
configuration file matches the URL in the PI Admin utility tool we saw before; to find the file
we go to where we installed PI Vision and on my test system it is in c drive.
From here we go into PIPC > PI Vision and then open up the web config file
Here we look for the search service URL and as you can see someone has set this to the new DNS
instance name.
Since these do not match we need to go back into the PI Admin utility and change the
URL to match our config file we just have to make sure the configuration file matches the utility we
can just change the configuration file URL but I want the search service URL to be the new DNS name.
So now we'll go back through and change that.
Now that we have matched the two URLs we need to see if the spins have been set for the new
DNS name; the spin should be set for the service account or machine account that is running the PI
Web API crawler and application pool services to check if the spins exist we open command
prompt and then type the following commands set svn dash l and then you want the domain
followed by the service account name or machine name.
And I forgot to put a space after the dash.
As you can see we have the http spins for the web one server but not for our DNS name so now we
need to set them so set sbn dash a which will check for duplicates before creating the service http
followed by our DNS name
followed by the domain and service account
So we do this for the host name and the fully qualified domain name
We can then check to make sure the spins do in fact exist and as you can see they're out there
it is not case sensitive either
So now once these are set you wait about five to ten minutes
and then check back on PI Vision to check your new DNS name and everything should be working there.