Which performance counters to monitor

PI Archive Subsystem

Archived Events/sec

Rate of successful event addition to the archive.

Archiving Flag*

Indicates if data is being archived. There are some situations when archiving is off, such as during an archive shift. But if it stays off, you need to check why.

Cache Flush Operations/sec

Rate at which points are flushed from the archive cache to disk.

Cache Record Count

Archive cache records in memory.

Corrupted Archives Count

Number of archives that are known to be corrupted.

Events Read/sec

Rate of archive events read.

Failed Archive Shift

Indicates if the most recent archive shift failed. If it did, you need to investigate the cause, such as lack of system resources.

Failed Events/sec

Number of events that failed to be added to memory or to an archive file.

Out of Order Events/sec

Number of out-of-order events posted in the archive.

Primary Archive % Used

Percent of used records in primary archive file.

Record Load Time Average

Useful for troubleshooting potential performance issues.

Time to Archive Shift

Number of seconds until the archive is projected to shift. This time is not calculated if the archive is less than 10% full.

Total Unflushed Events

Number of unflushed events.

PI Backup Subsystem

Backups Started

Number of backups that have started. Resets to 0 when the PI Backup subsystem is restarted.

Failed Backups

Number of backups that have failed. Resets to 0 when the PI Backup subsystem is restarted. Does not reflect failures from pisitebackup.bat and third-party backups.

Last Backup Failed

Specifies if the last backup failed (1) or not (0). Does not reflect failures from pisitebackup.bat and third-party backups.

Verification Failures

Total number of verification failures.

PI Base Subsystem

Module Count

Number of modules in the PI module database. Resets to 0 when the PI Backup subsystem is restarted.

Point Count

Total number of defined points. This number includes the connector point count.

PI Network Manager

Total_Receive Errors

Number of times an error occurs while the PI Network Manager is receiving a message.

Total_Send Errors

Number of times an error occurs while the PI Network Manager is sending a message.

PI Server Statistics

Is Available

Indicates if the server is available.

Is In Sync

Indicates if the server is synchronized with other members of the collective

PI Session Statistics

Bytes Received/Sec

Number of bytes received by the Data Archive session.

Bytes Sent/Sec

Number of bytes sent by the Data Archive session.

Messages Received/Sec

Number of messages received by the Data Archive session.

Messages Sent/Sec

Number of messages sent by the Data Archive session.

Receive Errors

Number of times an error occurs while the Data Archive session receives a message.

Send Errors

Number of times an error occurs while the Data Archive session sends a message.

PI Snapshot Subsystem

Event Queue Error Count

Number of times that an error reading or writing an event queue has occurred.

Event Queue Reset State

Indicates if the event queue is currently resetting as a result of an error (1), or not (0).

Events in Overflow Queues

Number of events in the overflow queue files. This value should be zero when Data Archive is correctly processing incoming data. If this value starts growing, it can indicate problems with corrupt archives or event queues, or another issue that is causing the PI Archive Subsystem problems with processing new data.

Events in Primary Queue

Number of events in the primary queue file.

GetSnapshots/sec

Rate of events read from the snapshot.

Number of Overflow Queues

Number of overflow queue files (0 if only the primary queue is active).

OutOfOrderSnapshots/sec

Out-of-order events sent to the snapshot.

Reset Folder Count

Number of event-queue reset folders currently in storage.

Queued Events/sec

Events sent to event queue.

Snapshots/sec

Events sent to the snapshot.

Cache (Windows counter)

Copy Read Hits %

Success rate of finding things in the file system cache and therefore the efficiency of the cache.

Logical Disk (Windows counter)

Free MegaBytes

Amount of unallocated space on the Data Archive computer disk drive. If this falls below 500 MB, free up space by adjusting the size of your event queue or archive.

Memory (Windows counter)

Available MBytes

Amount of immediately available physical memory. If this value stays at zero for more than 30 minutes, analyze and adjust loads.

Process (Windows counter)

Elapsed Time (process)

Number of seconds that a process has been running. If these go bad or stale, you might need to restart the following processes:

• PI Archive Subsystem (piarchss)

• PI Base Subsystem (pibasess)

• PI Message Subsystem (pimsgss)

• PI Network Manager (pinetmgr)

• PI Snapshot Subsystem (pisnapss)

Private Bytes

Look at CPU usage of each of the core subsystems.

Processor (Windows counter)

Total_%Processor Time

Amount of processor utilization. This is calculated by finding the percentage of time the processor is busy executing the idle thread and then subtracting that from 100 percent.

System (Windows counter)

System Up Time

Number of seconds that the computer has been running since it was last started. If this value goes bad or stale, there might be an operating system issue.