Presentation: Interfaces - Failover and Disconnected Startup

Two new features will soon be available to most OSIsoft interfaces; Interface Level Failover and Disconnected Start-up. Both of these features are part of the effort to provide Highly Available systems that are easy to own and maintain.

Interface level failover will allow customers to install redundant copies of an interface on separate interface computers, providing the benefit of uninterrupted collection of process data even when one of the interfaces is unable to collect data for any reason. With interface level failover, interface node maintenance, such as hardware upgrades, security updates, and software installs, can occur without loss of data as the redundant node will automatically collect and send data to PI. Moreover, in the event of a hardware, network, or software fault, interface level failover will prevent the loss of data.

Disconnected start-up of an interface will allow an interface to start from a cached list of points and point attributes. Therefore, an interface can start, load its list of PI points and collect data without connecting to a PI Server, which means that data that would normally be lost will be collected and buffered. A second benefit of disconnected startup is the reduced amount of time required for an interface to load its list of PI tags. For interfaces that must communicate with a PI Server via a slow network connection such as a satellite link, an option will be available to load the list of points from the cached list of points thereby greatly reducing the start-up time.