Introduction to PI Interface for PI Performance Monitor

The PI Interface for Performance Monitor collects performance counter data from Windows performance data providers, and sends this data to the PI System. The PI Performance Monitor interface uses Microsoft registry functions to access performance counter data.

Performance data providers supply data from services or other applications, which can start and stop at any time. By default, the interface connects to its providers during startup, which means it does not detect providers that become available after it starts. To enable the interface to detect data providers that start after it has performed its initial scan, you can use the command-line parameter /ReloadPerfData to configure the interface to periodically unload and reload data providers at a specified frequency, which imposes some overhead but enables it to detect newly-arrived data providers.

The interface can collect performance data from the local host and from remote providers. It can run on the same computer as the Data Archive to which it sends performance data, or it can run on a different computer.

The interface supports three different PI tag configurations:

• Data tags: Send data from a performance counter to a PI tag.

• Status tags: Sends the state of the performance counter to a PI tag. (Examples: performance counter offline, performance counter not running)

• Latency tags: Reports in milliseconds how much time it takes for the interface to request and receive performance data from a machine for a specified scan class.