Presentation: Rapid deployment of the PI System - How to deploy an entire PI System in 3.14 minutes

The presentation describes how to significantly reduce the deployment time for a complete PI System (PI Server, AF Server, PI OPC DA Interfaces, StreamInsight, PI to PI TCP/IP Interface) for over 300 deployments. Using the PowerShell Tools for the PI System and Virtual Machine imaging it has become possible to deploy a complete PI System in minutes rather than days. The solution involves manually creating a fully working PI System template; PI OPC DA Interfaces are connected to their sources and feeding the PI Server, which is contextualized by an AF Server. PI Server data is extracted into StreamInsight using the PI for StreamInsight Adapters and calculated results sent back, and finally the PI Server data is transferred to a central aggregated PI Collective using the PI to PI TCP/IP Interface (PI Buffer Subsystem). Once complete, this template PI system (VM image) can be used to deploy to multiple destinations, but the configuration of all the PI components will be incorrect for the new host of the VM images. This is where the Powershell Tools for the PI System comes into play. We have created a standard configuration & validation PowerShell script that will reconfigure all PI components of the new host. For example, the PowerShell script will: generate a new system ID for the AF Server, modify the interfaces configuration of the host PI Server to reflect the new host names of the interfaces, remotely connect to all other VMs and modify their PI API, PI SDK and AF SDK connections. The idea of the script is to self-discover its environment based on some IP Address rules and host name rules, and then become a one-click configuration of the complete PI environment. This means that all environments will be consistently installed and configured to make support a breeze.