PI Interface Status Utility Overview

Please see AL00284 - PI Interface Status Utility removed from PI Server Install Kits.

The ISU is used to monitor a "watch dog" tag on any interface to determine if fresh data is coming in to the PI Server. The ISU can detect failure of the interface and optionally write status codes to the interface's tags.

The ISU is used to determine the following scenarios:

• The interface is running but the interface node cannot send data to the PI Server.
• The interface is not running and a system digital state was not written to indicate that the interface has been shut down.

PI Interface Status Utility will not alert the user to the fact that the interface cannot communicate with the DCS since this information is already conveyed to the user by the interface writing a system digital state (typically I/O Timeout) to all interface points. In addition, the interface will not alert the user to the fact that the interface has been shutdown since this information is already conveyed to the user by a system digital state (typically shutdown or intf shutdown) written to all interface points.

One PI Interface Status tag is configured per monitored interface, each tag monitors a watchdog tag collecting data from the interface. If the watchdog tag's value on the PI server hasn't updated after a user specified amount of time, the PI Interface Status tag's status changes to a bad digital state status. PI-Interface Status Utility runs on a PI server, so it will continue to display the interface's status even if the connection between the interface and PI home node goes down.

The PI Interface Status documentation installed with the ISU provides complete details on how to set up and configure tags to monitor your interfaces.