Supported features

* For more information, see the "OMF Health Messaging" topic in the PI Universal Interface (UniInt) User Guide.

Uses PI SDK

The PI SDK and the PI API are bundled together and must be installed on each PI Interface node. This Interface specifically makes PI SDK calls to create PI Points.

Source of Timestamps

The interface accepts time stamps from either the OPC AE server or it can provide time stamps.

UniInt-based

UniInt stands for Universal Interface. UniInt is not a separate product or file; it is an OSIsoft-developed template used by developers and is integrated into many interfaces,

including this interface. The purpose of UniInt is to keep a consistent feature set and behavior across as many of OSIsoft’s interfaces as possible. It also allows for the very rapid development of new interfaces. In any UniInt-based interface, the interface uses some of the UniInt-supplied configuration parameters and some interface-specific parameters. UniInt is constantly being upgraded with new options and features.

The PI Universal Interface (UniInt) User Guide is a supplement to this manual.

Disconnected Start-Up

The PI OPCAE interface is built with a version of UniInt that supports disconnected start-up. Disconnected start-up is the ability to start the interface without a connection to the PI Data Archive. This functionality is enabled by adding /cachemode to the list of start-up parameters or by enabling disconnected startup using the ICU. Refer to the PI Universal Interface (UniInt) User Guide for more details on UniInt Disconnected startup.

SetDeviceStatus

The [UI_DEVSTAT] Health Point provides an indication of the connection status between the Interface and the OPC AE Server. The possible values for this string point are:

• "1 | Starting" – The Interface remains in this state until it has successfully collected data from its first scan.

• "0 | Good" – This value indicates that the Interface is able to connect to the OPC AE Server. A value of “Good” does not mean that all tags are receiving good values, but it is a good indication that there are no hardware or network problems.

• "4 | Intf Shutdown" – The Interface has shut down.

• "5 | | 192.168.9.77 DISCONNECTED" – This value indicates that the Interface cannot establish the TCP/IP connection to 192.168.9.77. A possible cause is that there is a network problem. Another reason is that a tag is improperly configured; specifically, it refers to an incorrect IP address. However, after you have verified that your tag configuration is correct, this value is a good indication of network problems

If the Interface cannot establish communication to multiple IP addresses, the value of this point contains these addresses. For example, "5 | | 172.16.10.10,172.16.10.11 DISCONNECTED"

• "5 | | 1 Device IN EXCEPTION" – This value indicates that the OPC AE Server returned an Exception Response of 4, 10, or 11. (Appendix A, “Troubleshooting” contains a list of Exception Responses.) The connection to the IP Address associated with the device is valid. However, the target device is either in severe error, unreachable, or unresponsive for some reason. You must look in the pipc.log file to determine the particular exception response and to determine the particular device and IP Address.

If there are disconnected IP Addresses as well as devices in exception, the Interface appends the "IN EXCEPTION" string to the "DISCONNECTED" error string.

• "5 | | 6 IP Addresses DISCONNECTED or with devices IN EXCEPTION" – The Interface writes this value when the message associated with a "5 | | ... DISCONNECTED" or "5 | | ... IN EXCEPTION" exceeds 200 bytes. This error message reports only the number of IP addresses that are disconnected or the number of devices that return EXCEPTION response of 4, 10, or 11. You must retrieve detailed error information from the pipc.log.

See the PI Universal Interface (UniInt) User Guide for more information on how to configure health points

Failover

• Server-Level Failover

  This interface supports server-level failover which allows the interface to continue to collect data from the currently active OPC AE server where two servers are running in unison in case of the primary server shutdown or unexpected communication failure.

• UniInt Failover Support (Cold/Warm/Hot)

  UniInt Phase 2 Failover provides support for cold, warm, or hot failover configurations. The Phase 2 hot failover results in a no data loss solution for bi- directional data transfer between the PI Data Archive and the Data Source given a single point of failure in the system architecture similar to Phase 1. However, in warm and cold failover configurations, you can expect a small period of data loss during a single point of failure transition. This failover solution requires that two copies of the interface be installed on different interface nodes collecting data simultaneously from a single data source. Phase 2 Failover requires each interface have access to a shared data file. Failover operation is automatic and operates with no user interaction. Each interface participating in failover has the ability to monitor and determine liveliness and failover status. To assist in administering system operations, the ability to manually trigger failover to a desired interface is also supported by the failover scheme.

  The failover scheme is described in detail in the UniInt Interface User Manual, which is a supplement to this manual. Details for configuring this Interface to use failover are described in the UniInt Failover Configuration section of this manual.

Vendor Software Required

The OPC AE server can run on the same system as the Interface itself, or it can run on another system. The Interface does not ship with an OSI-supplied OPC AE server.