Welcome to OSIsoft's
video playlist covering a PI Server Installation walk through.
Before we start installing the PI Server,
we'll take the time in this video to plan out our installation
and ensure that we've met the minimum hardware and software requirements.
Doing these things requires
that we have a brief understanding of what the PI Server consists
of and how its components layer on top of each other.
So let's consult OSIsoft's
Live Library to get a good understanding for the
PI System for the rest of the installation process.
Here we'll navigate to
LiveLibrary.OSIsoft.com
where I'll find the PI Server
documentation. And then I'll select the appropriate
version
and I'll drill down through the PI Server installation,
the PI Data Archive installation,
the welcome section and under overview we'll find the PI
System components. And we'll see here that
the PI System is comprised of one or more interface
nodes collecting data from data
sources which then in turn gets sent to the PI
Data Archives, PI AF Server which collectively
will make up the PI Server. The data will then
get sent to the client PC. So now
that we know that the PI Server consists of the PI Data
Archive and the PI AF Server, let's look
at how these components will interact during the installation process.
So like I said the PI Server is comprised
of two components, the AF Server and the
Data Archive. Now to install a Data Archive,
there has to be an AF Server available on the network.
And the AF Server itself is comprised
of two components, the AF SQL
Database and the AF Service.
The AF Service will require an AF SQL Database
which will require a Microsoft SQL Server
to be installed on the network. So from a fresh installation
the order of installation will be
one and install a Microsoft SQL Server on the network
if you don't already have one. And then two,
you can install the AF Server. And three, finally
we'll install the Data Archive.
So as you can see with these three components,
there is a lot of different valid network architectures
that will accommodate all three pieces. So let's take a look at the
most common examples.
Here in the PI System and SQL Server configuration options,
we will see a couple different
configurations. The first one being the
small PI System.
This is for systems with fewer than 10,000
assets and fewer than 25,000 PI Points.
So this is the architecture that we'll be installing
in this video walk through series. And here in the network
diagram, we can see that it consists of a PI Data Archive,
an AF Server and a SQL Server all on
the same node and we're using the SQL Server
license express.
For larger systems with more than 10,000 assets or
more than 25,000 points, we'll
use a larger higher performance PI System.
We can see here that involves the Data Archive
on its own dedicated hardware or even a collection
of hardware. And then an AF Server and
a SQL Database on a separate machine.
This will use the standard or enterprise
SQL Server license.
We also have distributed, highly available
PI Systems. This configuration will be for
high performance or specialized systems that require
network load balancing and redundancy.
This will also require a standard or enterprise SQL Server
license.
So the perfect architecture for you might not be in this
list but these are good places to start.
Next we'll look at the
Install PI Data Archive Server and start the
pre-installation process.
Now here the procedure
will start with determining the operating system requirements.
So we'll click here
and open the system requirements section where
we'll see that the Windows Server 2012 R2
that I intend to use is listed here. So that's fine.
And scrolling down, the AF
Server requirements will be in the PI
AF Installation Guide or the AF Release Notes.
So I've already downloaded those. So let's go
see what the AF Server requires.
Here in my PI Install folder,
my Release Notes. And then
down in the setup section, we can
see that Windows Server 2012 R2 will be a valid
operating system. and I'll
be able to use my SQL Server 2012 Express
edition, so that's fine.
But to install the AF Server, I'll
also need an AF Database. And the AF Database
will be created by this AF SQL script
execution
feature. We'll see here that in order for the AF Database to be
installed, this AF SQL script execution feature has to run
when we run the AF Install Kit.
So we have to run this in AF Install Kit as
an account with a sysadmin connection to the SQL Server.
So this is another important requirement of our
PI installation process.
We'll come back into
our PI Server Guide and then determine the disk
volumes for our deployment.
So OSIsoft will recommend that you have five
disks for your PI Server. One for the operating
system, one for your PI root directory,
one for your PI Archives, one for your Event Queue
and finally one for backups. Here
back in My Computer,
we'll see that I already have these five setup for me and I've even named them
appropriately depending on what I expect these drives to be used
for. Next we will
go to the Download PI Data Archive
resource files and setup section
where we'll see the
find hardware and system size requirements
spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will ask for things
like how many PI Points you expect to have
and what your expected data rates are. And it will output
how big your PI Server should be based on its processor speed,
how much storage space it should have and how much
RAM it should have. I've already
ran this spreadsheet and sized my machine
appropriately. So we'll move to the next section and the pre-installation phase.
I'm going to install the PI AF Server
in a later video. So we'll skip ahead to
5 where we record the Data Archive server name.
Luckily mine is written here
on my desktop, so I know that it's PISRV2016.
Step 6 will ensure that the port
5450 is open. So this will link
to a KB that will describe all of the network
ports that have to be open for the PI Server to communicate with the rest of the
PI System. So you can
open that KB and either setup the firewall rules
yourself or send it to IT.
Next we'll ensure that the proper permission levels for
installation, so we already know
that we need sysadmin to install the AF SQL Database
on the SQL Server. But we also need local
administrator on the machine that we are installing the software.
So what we'll do is we'll search for computer
management
where we'll
look at our local users and groups and check to make
sure that we are in the administrators group.
So this here is my personal account.
So this means I'm a local administrator, so I should have
no problems running the Install Kits.
Next we'll synchronize the
the time settings on our PI System computers.
Since all of my components are going to be on the same
machine, synchronize doesn't really make sense.
But I'll come into the date and time settings
and make sure that the timezone and the time is configured appropriately.
Next we will disable
the Windows timezone environment variable
and mine came this way by default but if you aren't sure if
yours is or isn't, follow the steps in
step 9 depending on what operating system you are using.
So the last two steps
will involve creating a machine signature
file and then using that machine signature file to
generate a license file. So I'll do this
as part of the installation process in a
later video. So that means the last thing to do is
actually download out Install Kits. So here
navigating to
TechSupport.OSIsoft.com,
we'll start
our downloads.
So after logging in we'll
choose the Data Archive downloads.
And then the Install Kit we want is this
PI Data Archive 2016 Install Kit.
So we'll click here and follow the instructions to
get the Kits downloaded. I've already done this so I'm
going to move ahead to the AF section.
Here we'll download our
PI AF Server 2016
Install Kit as well as the SQL Server
Express 2012 with Tools if we don't already have one on the network.
And then we'll download our PI
Analysis Service 2016 Install Kit. This will allow
us to run calculations with our elements and
attributes.
PI documentation is available on the Live Library.
But to get the SQL Server Express white paper,
we'll come down to the bottom of the page here
and in white papers,
we'll download the SQL Server 2012 Express
for PI Server whitepaper. And this will guide
us through the installation process for our SQL Server.
So now once we have all of our other Kits downloaded
here in the PI Install folder, and we've
confirmed our access permissions and system specifications
we are ready to begin installing our PI Server.
The first step will be to install the SQL Server
to host the AF Database and that's going to be in the next
video in the series. If you've already done that
installation or already have a SQL Server that you intend to
use, you can skip ahead to
the Install a New PI Server 2016 Full Walk Through video.
And in that video we'll install the PI AF Server
and then the PI Data Archive.