Historian Release Notes

Table 1. What's New in Historian

The following enhancements and new features have been added.
Description Tracking ID

Configuration Hub

Historian offers the Configuration Hub application, which is a UI-based application to perform all the configuration tasks in Historian.

Advantages of using Configuration Hub:
  • One-stop solution to manage Historian systems: You can create and manage Historian systems using Configuration Hub. In addition, you can manage collectors, data stores, and tags.
  • Horizontal scalability: You can increase the storage capacity and performance of a Historian system by connecting multiple Historian servers so that they work as a single logical unit. This distributed processing helps you manage large-scale Historian deployments easily (up to 100 million tags).
  • High availability: You can create mirror locations in a Historian system to achieve high availability of the system. If one of the systems is not available, you can retrieve data from the remaining servers in the mirror location.
  • Ease of setting up: You can install all the collectors used in a Historian system easily by providing the required details with the help of the user-friendly interface.
For more information, refer to About Configuration Hub.
 F49842

Simplified Installation of Collectors

The installation of collectors is now quick, easy, and more reliable:
  • You are no longer required to provide connection details while installing collectors.
  • You are no longer required to reinstall collectors when adding a new instance of a collector to a server.
  • When you install collectors, the executable files and Remote Collector Management are installed automatically. You can then add a collector instance using the new Configuration Hub application or the new RemoteCollectorConfigurator utility.
  • You can create and run multiple instances of the same collector on a single machine.
F55349

User Interface to Manage Collectors Remotely

Configuration Hub provides a user-friendly interface to manage collectors running on remote servers. You can also view the status of all the collectors with visual representation. For more information, refer to About Installing and Managing Collectors Remotely.

 F51130
The Historian OPC UA Historical Data Access (HDA) server

In addition to the OPC Classic HDA server, Historian now offers an OPC UA HDA server. Compared to OPC Classic, OPC UA has advantages such as platform independence, scalability, high availability, internet capability, and easy portability. The Historian OPC UA HDA server retrieves data from Proficy Historian, and sends it to any OPC UA HDA client. For more information, refer to About the Historian OPC UA HDA Server.

 F35159

Historian Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Tools Enhancements

  • In addition to administrators, other users can now use the ETL tools.
  • Dependency on the operating system has been removed. To facilitate this enhancement, the ETL tools now use standard C# forms instead of the MMC console.
  • The logging mechanism for the Historian ETL Extract, Historian ETL PI Extract, and Historian ETL Load settings has been enhanced and standardized using log4net. In addition, error messages are now more descriptive.
  • You can now disable the certificate publisher service if starting an ETL tool fails.
For information on the ETL tools, refer to Overview of the Historian Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Tools.
 F51922

Utility to Add, Modify, and Delete Collector Instances

In addition to the new Configuration Hub application, you can add, modify, and delete collector instances using a new utility named RemoteCollectorConfigurator. It is a System-API-based tool, which connects to the destination Historian server, and allows you to add, modify, and delete a collector instance without the need to install Web-based Clients. For more information, refer to About Managing Collector Instances Using the RemoteCollectorConfigurator Utility.
Historian Client Access API Based on .NET Core

Historian provides a new Client Access API that is based on Microsoft .NET Core Framework. It is platform-independent; that is, you can use it on any operating system, such as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.
Table 2. Resolved Issues
Description Tracking ID

Previously, when you attempted to send data to Azure IoT Hub using a collector, the following error message appeared in the AzureLogCollector log file (if AzureLogLevel registry key is set to level 3): ERROR: Invalid Azure IOT Hub Connection Parameters. This issue has been resolved.

DE141266
Previously, the Historian OPC UA DA collector was not trusted by Kepware after upgrade. This issue has been resolved. DE145543
Previously, there were failures and errors between the OPC Classic HDA server and Ampla. Connection error messages appeared in Ampla, and it stopped working periodically. In addition, you could not reconnect, and it sometimes required rebooting the system. This issue has been resolved. DE137109
Previously, the Client Access API (based on .NET) ignored tag security groups applied on individual tags. This issue has been resolved. DE133324
Previously, events were missing if multiple numbers of events were generated in a duration of milliseconds. This issue has been resolved. DE135981
Previously, Historian stopped responding and required a restart. This issue has been resolved. DE137225
Previously, sometimes, the OSI PI collector crashed and the status was set to Unknown. Even if the status was set to running, data was not collected to OSM. This issue has been resolved. DE116986
Previously, the Historian OPC UA collector stored bad quality values with good quality. This issue has been resolved. DE121590
Previously, the SQL Server alarms and events database result was corrupted. Due to this, you could not view all the alarms and events data. This issue has been resolved. DE128453
Previously, the OPC Classic UA collector could not handle tag values with Scandinavian letters. This issue has been resolved. DE121607
Previously, there were SQL performance issues due to Proficy.Historian.Alarm. This issue has been resolved. DE137107
Previously, there was an access violation in OSIsoft.PI.Net.dll while adding tags to the OSI PI collector. This issue has been resolved. DE138002
Previously, when the current archive files were full and the first old archive files rolled over, the alarms and events data was deleted as well. This issue has been resolved. DE121587
Previously, recalculation stopped and did not start. This issue has been resolved. DE138380
Previously, tags that were configured to collect data as unsolicited type did not update data changes. This issue has been resolved. DE138855

Previously, performance statistics value was blank for the following:

  • PerformanceStatistics("ArchiveFreeSpace")
  • PerformanceStatistics("ArchivePredictedDaysToFull")
This issue has been resolved. 		DE138791
Previously, the purge Alarms tool ihPurgeAlarms.exe did not work. This issue has been resolved. DE117248
Previously, there was an issue with the Alarm OLEDB query with Set AlarmTimestampCheck to 2. This issue has been resolved. DE138221
Previously, the íFIX collector appeared as running, but data was not collected. This issue has been resolved. DE123202
Previously, SQL with OLDEB Linked server crashed. This issue has been resolved. DE109971
Previously, when using the tool Historian.AandE.Migration.exe, each time a new guid named database was created instead of merging the data into the existing alarms and events database. This resulted in the alarms and events data not being available in the Central Historian SQL. This issue has been resolved. DE107951
Previously, the Server-to-Server collector crashed with Array Tags while double freeing memory. This issue has been resolved. DE138002, DE129435
Previously, the iFix Alarms and Events collector crashed randomly on a newly installed system. This issue has been resolved. DE141985
Previously, when you restored an archive, the status, start time, and end time were blank. In addition, the restored archive file remained in the configured backup folder instead of being restored in the configured archives folder. This issue has been resolved. DE142073
Previously, data archiver RAM usage increased constantly, and the archiver crashed. This issue has been resolved. DE144581
Previously, Historian query on the iHAlarms table returned a column twice. This issue has been resolved. DE128598
Previously, the layout of Calculation Triggers did not have the same layout as when you create a tag directly from Historian Administrator. This issue has been resolved. DE142926
Previously, the OPC UA DA collector did not reconnect automatically when the IGS driver was restarted. This issue has been resolved. DE139301
Previously, the MQTT collector did not support microseconds. This issue has been resolved. DE141643
Previously, bad value point was archived in Predix Timeseries when the interface compression timeout was defined during the timeout cycle. This issue has been resolved. DE140878
Previously, the Client Access API sample tool ignored the login credentials - direct read request. This issue has been resolved. DE138576
Previously, double word / 32-bit integer did not work correctly. This issue has been resolved. DE145227
Previously, the OPC Classic HDA server stopped responding, locked all other Historian Client connections. This issue has been resolved. DE145912
Previously, Tagname was blank when you collect alarms data using the Server-to-Server collector. This issue has been resolved. DE121764 DE118221
Previously, the OPC Classic HDA clients failed to retrieve data from Historian. This issue has been resolved. DE145861
Previously, calculated query returned quality random values above 100%. This issue has been resolved. DE121604
Previously, when using the OPC Classic UA collector to collect data of tags using polled collection with 200ms interval on 250 tags, overruns were seen. This issue has been resolved. DE146615
Previously, while executing a query, the following error message appeared: Execution stopped because a resource limit was reached. No results were returned. This issue has been resolved. DE153125
Previously, Excel Addin did not set the State Value to refer to Excel Cell (that is, Data!$F$3). This issue has been resolved. DE135544
Previously, the web-trend interpolated data did not display bad quality data samples. This issue has been resolved. DE84517
Previously, Excel Add-In performed calculations on tag names. This issue has been resolved. DE146826
Previously, archives were created with a future date. This issue has been resolved. DE149376
Previously, if you ran a query for collectors using the client access API, data archiver crashed. This issue has been resolved. DE141877
Previously, when restoring data directly from a .zip file, the archive was marked empty. This issue has been resolved.
  • DE131590
  • DE150243
  • DE153276
Previously, when trying to modify the list of states, enumerated set properties (that is, name, values, description) were not loaded correctly into text fields. This issue has been resolved. DE121599
Table 3. Limitations
Description
You cannot change the destination of a collector instance from Historian to Predix TimeSeries. Create a new instance as required.
Using Configuration Hub, you cannot add comments, enable the debug mode, pause data collection, resume data collection, modify, or delete an instance of offline collectors. In addition, you cannot compress network messages. You can, however, delete the collector instance using the Collector Manager utility at a command prompt.
Configuration Hub is not supported in a clustered Historian environment.
Table 4. Known Issues

The following issues are unresolved in this release.
Description Tracking ID
The OPC UA DA collector stops working for unsolicited tags after you disconnect and reconnect to the source. DE135433
For a collector instance whose destination is Azure IoT Hub, you cannot restart the collector using the Save and Restart button in Configuration Hub. You cannot restart the collector using the Windows service either.

Workaround: Use the Restart Collector API to restart the collector.

DE151454
After you delete a collector instance, the Windows service and the registry entry for the collector are not deleted.

Workaround: Delete the Windows service and the registry entry manually.

 DE151169
If the version of Historian collectors is different from that of Client Tools, ihSQL does not work.

Workaround: Ensure that you have the same version of Client Tools and collectors.

 DE149550
Using Configuration Hub, if you add a system by specifying its host name, and then add the same system by specifying its IP address, or vice versa, no validation error appears. DE146366
When Configuration Manager is down, you cannot browse for tags in a horizontally scalable system. DE141885
If you register the Configuration Hub plugin with a remote Configuration Hub container, the local instance of the connection is not unregistered.
Workaround:
  1. Run the Web_Clients_Configuration_Tool.exe file located in the following folder: C:\Program Files\GE Digital\Historian Config
  2. In the Config Hub Configuration section, in the External Server name box, enter the local host name, and then select Unregister.
 DE150907
If you install Configuration Hub and the Web Admin console on the same machine, and use self-signed certificates for both of them, the login page for Configuration Hub does not appear.
Workaround: Disable the domain security policies:
  1. Access the following URL: chrome://net-internals/#hsts
  2. In the Domain Security Policy section, in the Delete domain security policies field, enter the domain name for Configuration Hub, and then select Delete.
 DE151105
You cannot create multiple instances of the File collector on a single machine. DE151715
Using Configuration Hub, you cannot restart an OPC collector whose destination is Azure IoT Hub.

Workaround: Restart the collector from the Collectors section in Configuration Hub, modify the registry entry for the collector instance and restart manually, or restart the collector machine.

DE151454
When you change the destination of a collector from Historian to Predix TimeSeries, no success message appears although the destination is changed. In addition, the collector is not started automatically. DE151859
Even after you uninstall collectors and Web-based Clients, the corresponding Windows services and registry entries are not removed. DE151169
When you upgrade iFIX collectors to version 9.0, the custom registry folders are deleted. DE151435
In Configuration Hub, for a stand-alone Historian system, when you select a server, the Diagnostics Manager service does not appear in the Details section. DE151711
If you upgrade Historian from a version earlier than 8.1, by default, storing future data is enabled.
Workaround:
  1. Stop the Historian DataArchiver service.
  2. Open Command Prompt with elevated privileges or administrator privileges.
  3. Navigate to the folder in which the ihDataArchiver_x64.exe file is located. By default, it is C:\Program Files\Proficy\Proficy Historian\x64\Server.
  4. Run the following command: ihDataArchiver_x64 OPTION.<data store name> ihArchiverAllowFutureDataWrites 0
 DE149376
If you upgrade Historian server from a single-server installation to a primary mirror installation, and if you then add a distributed machine to the Historian system using Configuration Hub, you may see issues in connecting the distributed machine to the primary machine.

Workaround: Restart all the Historian server services on Primary Mirror server and Distributed/Mirror server machine.

DE152582
In a horizontally scalable system, if Client Manager is down, Web-Based Clients do not failover to the other Client Managers in the system. And, the following error message appears in Web-Based Clients: Service call to central buffer server fail. DE152830

In a horizontally scalable system, instead of adding a distributed machine, if you add a primary mirror machine or a monolithic (stand-alone) machine, no validation message appears, but causes issues later.

 DE153191
If you upgrade Historian server to 9.0, the machine is restarted abruptly when the installation is still in progress. The installation will, however, resume after the machine is restarted. DE151125
If you upgrade Historian server from a mirror system to a horizontally scalable system in 9.0, you cannot query data from the distributed machine when the distributed machine is removed from the DefaultMirror location. DE152677
If you install iFIX on a machine that has Historian Web-based Clients, sometimes, the reverse proxy service stops working.

Workaround: Restart the reverse proxy service - GE Operations Hub Httpd Reverse Proxy.

 DE151157
If you reinstall collectors and Web-based Clients, the size of the Historian server and Web-based Clients appears as decreased in the Programs and Features page, although there is no functional impact. DE152484
When you install Client Tools, incorrect installation pages appear, although the installation is successful.

Workaround: Ignore the incorrect installation pages, and proceed with the installation of Client Tools.

 DE153175
If you change the destination of a collector instance, the destination is not updated in the older machine, although the destination is updated in the new machine. DE153176
When you attempt to fetch a list of OPC servers using the Get OPC Server API, an error occurs. This is applicable to the following OPC servers:
  • OPC Data Access
  • OPC Historical Data Access
  • OPC Alarms and Events

Workaround: Add collector instances using the RemoteCollectorConfigurator utility.

 DE147276
Even if you install Web-based Clients using an alias name, you cannot access Configuration Hub using the alias name. DE148939
While connecting to a remote Historian, you cannot add an instance of the File collector unless Client Tools are installed. DE152330
After you install Client Tools in an iFIX system, the Configure Historian Server option is disabled in iFIX 6.5.

Workround: Reinstall Client Tools, and restart the machine.

 DE149001
In Configuration Hub, for a horizontally scalable system, in the Collectors section, you cannot access an offline collector; a blank error message appears.

Workaround: Ensure that the URI registry entry is the same for all the machines in a horizontally scalable system.

 DE151380
If you upgrade collectors to version 9.0, an error occurs when you access Historian Administrator.

Workround: Install Client Tools.

 DE151932
If you upgrade collectors to version 9.0, you cannot manage the OPC collectors. An error message appears in the CollectorManager.shw file.

Workaround: Refer to Troubleshooting Remote Collector Management Issues.

 DE151366
While installing Web-based Clients, after the connection to the external UAA is successful, if you change the UAA details, you can proceed to the next step even without testing the connection. Because of this, you will not be able to connect to the UAA server if the UAA details are incorrect (although you can install Web-based Clients).

Workaround: Test the connection to the external UAA again, and only after the connection is successful, proceed to the next step.

 DE155570