Activate the Historian License

Advantage Licensing is the software system for activating and managing product licenses. Using the tools in licensing and our Customer Center website, you can view, activate, and manage licenses at your site.

Using Advantage Licensing, you can:
  • View current licenses for the products residing on a computer.
  • Choose a licensing method (Internet, local intranet, or file-based).
  • Change licenses (Activate, Return, Refresh).
Historian is available in three license types:
  • Essentials
  • Standard
  • Enterprise
The Essentials edition is included as the on-board Historian with the purchase of some iFIX and CIMPLICITY licenses, and cannot be licensed or sold outside of those packages. Essentials edition customers who require options available in the Standard or Enterprise editions or require more than a 1000 tags must purchase either a Standard or Enterprise License with the appropriate tag count.

Historian HD is sold and licensed separately from Historian. Historian HD provides the Historian user a standard method to move Historian tag configuration and historical archive data from a Windows environment to a Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). HDFS is the primary distribution storage used by Hadoop applications.

A component that is used only by the Historian HD license is installed with your Historian installation: the Historian Archive Ingestion service. This service is reserved for use only with the Historian HD big data analytics platform and is listed as Manual under Startup Type. Stopping this service does not impact the Historian functionality. Unless you are licensed to use Historian HD, do not attempt to start or monitor this service, as it may impact the ability to run the Historian Data Archiver service. For more information regarding Historian HD, refer to https://www.ge-ip.com/products/proficy-historian-hd/p3714.

The following table provides information on the availability of each Historian component for each license type. Optional indicates that the component is not available by default, but can be purchased separately.
Note: For a Calculation collector and a Server-to-Server collector, you can either opt for stand-alone use of bi-modal collectors or add Enterprise collectors to the Standard Historian license. Using these options, you can quickly and easily send data from one Historian server to another or directly to Predix Timeseries. For information on the pricing, contact the Support team.
Component Essentials Standard Enterprise Distributed
Server Functionality
Data modification Yes Yes Yes Yes
Client Access Licenses (CALs) 2 2500 2500 2500
Cluster support No Yes Yes Yes
Collector redundancy Optional Yes Yes Yes
Horizontal scalability (data mirroring) No No Yes Yes
Data stores 5 10 20 20
Data stores expansion (200) No No Optional Optional
Digital / Enumerated / Array Tags Yes Yes Yes Yes
Distributed Historian No No No Yes
Electronic signatures No Optional Optional Optional
The Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools No No Yes Yes
Fault-tolerant computer support Yes Yes Yes Yes
Maximum historical tags 1,000 50,000 20,000,000 20,000,000
Microsecond support No Yes Yes Yes
The OLE DB provider Yes Yes Yes Yes
The OPC Alarms and Events server No Optional Yes Yes
The OPC Classic HDA server Yes Yes Yes Yes
The OPC UA HDA server No Yes Yes Yes
The Historian server Yes Yes Yes Yes
Remote Collector Management No No Yes Yes
SCADA buffer (10000 tags, 200 days) Yes Yes Yes Yes
User-Defined multi-field tags No Yes Yes Yes
Client Functionality
The Historian Model No Yes Yes Yes
The Historian Excel add-in Yes Yes Yes Yes
Historian Administrator Yes Yes Yes Yes
Operations Hub Freemium No Yes Yes Yes
The Web Admin console No Yes Yes Yes
Trend Client No Yes Yes Yes
Configuration Hub Yes Yes Yes Yes
Collector Functionality
Aveva (Wonderware) Collector with the cloud option No Yes Yes Yes
The Calculation collector No Available as a part of the Enterprise Collectors option Yes Yes
Collector Toolkit SDK No Yes Yes Yes
The CygNet collector with the cloud option No Yes Yes Yes
Expressions No No Yes Yes
The File collector No Yes Yes Yes
The HAB collector No Yes Yes Yes
The iFIX collector Yes Yes Yes Yes
The MQTT collector No Yes Yes Yes
The ODBC collector with the cloud option No Yes Yes Yes
The OPC Classic Alarms and Events collector No Optional Yes Yes
The OPC DA collector with the cloud option Yes Yes Yes Yes
The OPC Classic HDA collector with the cloud option No Yes Yes Yes
The OPC UA Data Access (DA) collector with the cloud option No Yes Yes Yes
The OSI PI collector with the cloud option No Yes Yes Yes
The OSI PI distributor No Yes Yes Yes
The Python collector No Available as a part of the Enterprise Collectors option Yes Yes
The Server-to-Server collector with the cloud option No Available as a part of the Enterprise Collectors option Yes Yes
The Simulation collector Yes Yes Yes Yes
The Windows Performance collector No Yes Yes Yes
Note: * Starting Historian 7.2, SCADA buffer count is increased from 2500 to 10000. Historian Essentials license includes 2500 buffered tags and a 200-day circular buffer if permanent storage is less than 1000 tags (that is, if CIMPLICITY points are 1500 and below). It includes 10000 buffered tags and a 200-day circular buffer if permanent storage is 1000 tags (that is, if CIMPLICITY points are 5000 and above).

To activate the Historian license:

  1. If the license is already activated on your system, access License Client, select Advanced > Clear license information on this computer.
  2. If you received an email containing an activation code, you must migrate to Advantage Licensing. Get the latest licensing software at http://digitalsupport.ge.com.

    If you did not receive an activation code, follow the instructions about M4 keys at http://digitalsupport.ge.com.

  3. For all Windows operating systems, ensure that they are updated with the most recent Windows updates:
    • If you are using Windows Server 2012 R2, you must install the update described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2919355.

      Follow the instructions in KB2919442 and then KB2919355 before proceeding to KB2999226. This update must be installed before you install the License Client.

  4. Download the Historian software.
  5. Install the licensing software.
  6. Activate the Historian license.