Operating Suggestions

Important: You do not have the latest version of Historian! You are missing out on the newest capabilities and enhanced security. For information on all the latest features, see the Historian product page. For more information on upgrades, contact your GE Digital sales agent or e-mail GE Digital Sales Support. For the most up-to-date documentation, go here.

Solve Minor Operating Problems

The following is a table of troubleshooting tips for solving minor operating problems with Historian.

Issue	Suggested Action
After setting the system clock back, browsing the collector from the Historian Administrator produces a Visual Basic script error.	Delete temporary Internet files and restart Internet Explorer.
With the Historian Non-Web Administrator, switching usernames causes the system to reject the login if the User must change password at next login option is selected at time of user creation.	New users with this setting must log in to the appropriate Windows operating system at least once. If the login is rejected, drag the Non-Web Administrator to your desktop, right-click the icon, select "Run as . . .", enter a new username and password, and click OK. The login of the new user is then accepted.
A long error message from the File Collector does not fit within the message field in the Historian File Collector console window, resulting a partial display of the message.	Open the File Collector log file to see the complete text of the error message.
Excel Sample Reports do not display data.	When opening a Sample Excel report, you may receive a message prompting you to update all linked information in the workbook (Yes) or keep the existing information (No). It is recommended that you select No and keep the existing information. The links will be automatically updated for your worksheet. Save your worksheet after the links have been updated.
Need to connect an Historian Server to an Historian Client through a firewall.	Open port 14000 to enable client to server connection through a firewall.
Receiving archive offline failed writes messages.	These occur when the timestamps of data being sent to the archiver are not in the valid time range of any online archives. For example, failed writes occur when the timestamps appear before the oldest archive, the archive is offline, or timestamps are more than 15 minutes past the current time on another archiver.

FAQ: Run a Collector as a Service

The following list is frequently asked questions about running a collector as a service.

Can all collectors be run as a Windows service? If not, which ones cannot?: The OPC Collector, File Collector, Simulation Collector, Calculation Collector, and Server-to- Server Collector can be run as services. The iFIX Collector run as a background task and cannot be run as a service.
Can all collectors be run as an application? If not, which ones cannot?: All collectors can run as applications (console programs). This includes the Simulation Collector. To make a collector run as a console program, pass a RUNASDOS command line parameter.

What does "running as a service" mean?: It means that the collector appears in the Control Panel list of services. It can run at system boot or be run with a different username and password from the currently logged-in user.
How can the iFIX collector be set up to run when no one is logged in?: It can be set up to run without a user login by adding it to the iFIX SCU task list as a background task and by configuring iFIX to continue running after logoff in local startup.
How do you shut down a collector running as console application?: Collectors started as console applications should be shut down by typing S at the command prompt in the DOS window and pressing Enter.
Can a collector be run as a Windows service and then stopped and restarted?: Yes. Collectors that can run as a service can be stopped and started in Control Panel Services. They can be paused/resumed through the Historian Administrator.
What is the difference between running a collector to start as a service on boot up using the Services applet in Control Panel versus running iFIX as a service, which starts the collector through the startup task configuration in the SCU?: The collectors that can run as a service would not be started from iFIX. They can be started from the Control Panel start at system boot. Although you cannot run an iFIX Collector as a service, you can log off and on while it is running.

Changing the Base Name of Automatically Created Archives

When the IHC file is created, it stores the name of the server inside the IHC file. Automatically created archives use that server name from the IHC file as a base name, not the Base Archive Name configured in the Historian Administrator.

When you manually create an archive, however, the archive uses the Base Archive Name from the Historian Administrator.

If you move an IHC file from one machine to another, you may want to change the default base archive name to match the new server. To change the default Base Archive Name, create a new .IHC file.

Export your tags using the Excel Add-in.
The Fields to Export dialog box appears.
Select all tag attributes and click OK.
The data is exported to a new Excel worksheet.
Examine the Comments column in the new worksheet. To ensure a clean import, the Comments column must be completely full or completely empty. If no comments are found, this column must be deleted to ensure a clean import. If only some comments are missing, the missing fields must be filled out with comments.
Save the Excel spreadsheet.
Stop the Historian Data Archiver service.
Open the default archive path in Windows Explorer and rename the .IHC file.
Rename MyMachine.IHC to MyMachine.OLD.
Restart the Historian Data Archiver service.
A new, blank IHC file is created for the machine.
Import your tags to this new configuration using the Excel Add-In.

Configuring the Inactive Timeout Value

The Non-Web Administrator offers a configurable timeout. This configurable timeout determines how long the Non-Web Administrator will wait before severing its connection to an inactive Historian archive. The default timeout value is 90 seconds.

Assuming Historian is already open, double-click on the Main button to open the Historian Administrator Login dialog box.
Click the Browse for Server button.
Select the Historian server you wish to configure from the Servers list.
In the Connection Timeout field, select the Use Value option and enter a timeout value in seconds.

Configuring Deep Data Tree Warnings

Reading and writing to deep trees with large time ranges can be very inefficient. Create a MaxIndexRecursionDepth registry key to configure the depth at which the archiver will warn about deep data trees.

From the Start menu, select Run, and then enter Regedit.
Open the following key folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Intellution, Inc.\iHistorian\Services\DataArchiver
Create a value as DWORD called MaxIndexRecursionDepth.
Set MaxIndexRecursionDepth to a number higher or lower than the default value of 900.
To get more warning messages, set a smaller number if you have an archive which is 10 to 100 deep.
Click OK.
Close the Registry Editor.
Restart the archiver for the changes to take effect.

Control Data Flow Speeds with Registry Keys

Configure buffer flush speed with the BufferFlushMultiplier key

Store-and-forward buffering is a key feature of Historian collectors. It prevents data loss during planned or unplanned network outages between a collector and Historian server.

If the collector is disconnected from the archiver for several hours or days, many megabytes of data can be buffered and must be delivered by the collector to the Data Archiver upon reconnect. Since all data is sent from the collector to the archiver in time order, the design goal has been to catch up to real time as quickly as possible by sending data as fast as possible.

If this is not the desired behavior because you want to limit the network load on a slow, shared Wide Area Network (WAN) or you want to limit the CPU load on the Data Archiver caused by the incoming data, you can configure the collector to throttle the data it is sending. Throttling Store and Forward does not affect the alarm and events collector.

Important: Because data is sent in time order (oldest first), you will not be able to retrieve current historical data until the throttled flush is complete.

Configuring the throttle is easy, but it requires modifying a registry key, so it should be done with caution.

A DWORD registry key called BufferFlushMultiplier is present under each collector under: HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Intellution, Inc.\iHistorian\Services\YOUR_COLLECTOR_TYPE.

To slow the store and forward throttling, set the value of BufferFlushMultiplier to 2. The 2 means that the collector should never send data at more than 2 times its normal rate to limit network and CPU load.
To disable throttling, set the value of BufferFlushMultiplier to 0 or delete the registry key.

Control archiver speed with the NumIntervalsFlush registry key

The NumIntervalsFlush registry key controls how quickly the collector sends data to the archiver. The collector collects from the data source at the user configured rate, but for efficiency it bundles data samples in a single write to archive. By default, the collector will send data to archiver every 2 seconds or 10,000 samples, whichever happens first. Most often, it sends every 2 seconds because the collector is not collecting that many samples that fast.

If you need collected data sent to archiver right away, so that it is available for retrieval or for calculations, use the NumIntervalsFlush registry key.

You will have to create the registry key, as it does not exist by default. Create a DWORD value called NumIntervalsFlush under the collector, in the same place as HISTORIANNODENAME and INTERFACENAME. On a 64-bit Windows Operating System, all 32-bit component-related registry keys (such as collectors, client tools, and APIs) will be located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Intellution, Inc.\iHistorian\.

The preferred setting for Num Intervals Before Flush is 5. The intervals are 100 millisecond increments. The default of 20 means (20 * 100msec) = 2000 msec = 2 seconds. Set the value to 5 and the collector will send every 500msec.

Note: Changes to the registry key do not take effect until the collector is restarted. This setting affects the sending of data whether it was collected polled or unsolicited.

Configure Inactive Server Reset Timeout

You can configure inactive server connections to reset automatically with the SocketRecvTimeOut registry key. SocketRecvTimeOut configures a timeout that forces the connection to drop and re-establish if no data is received during the specified time. Consider this configuration when your collector goes to status Unknown for long periods of time even when the connection between collector and archiver is good.

Create a DWORD registry key SocketRecvTimeOut under the collector where the problem is occurring and set to a value greater than 90 seconds. A typical value would be 300 seconds. If no bytes are received by the collector for 300 seconds, then the network connection will be closed and re-established.