Windows Performance Collector

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About Windows Performance Collector

The Windows Performance Collector collects Windows performance counter data and sends it to the Historian server for archival. The data collected can be used to monitor and assess the performance and efficiency of the computer running the Historian software and also assess the status of the Historian Archiver and other system statistics derived by the Historian counters. You can collect almost any Windows performance counter that is visible in Windows Performance Monitor and thereby determine if there are any issues with the operating system or the computer that affects the performance.

While both the Windows Performance Monitor and Windows Performance Collector can collect the performance counters data, the collector provides the advantage of storing it in Historian archives, making it easy to view in Historian clients and compare to other data stored in Historian. The archived values can be viewed as the Last 10 Values in the Historian Administrator or included in an Excel report together with other Historian data.

You can also use this collector to collect performance data from other GE Intelligent Platforms products such as CIMPLICITY, iFIX, and also Historians own performance counters.

The Windows Performance Collector collects polled data only and creates Historian tags with the data type that best matches the data type of the performance counter being collected.

Windows Performance Collector - Requirements

To use a Windows Performance Collector, you require Historian 6.0 or higher installed on the following machines:

  • The computer running the collector.
  • The computer running Data Archiver.
  • The computer running the Administrator.

The Windows Performance Collector can only collect performance counters from the local computer it is running on. You can run only one Windows Performance collector on a computer.

Windows Performance Collector Feature Summary

The following table outlines the features of the Windows Performance Collector.

Feature Capability
Minimum Poll Interval Yes- 1 second
Unsolicited Collection No
Timestamp Resolution Yes- 1 millisecond
Accept Device Timestamps No
Floating Point Data Yes
Integer Data Yes
String Data Yes
Binary Data No
Collector Compression Yes
Reads data, tags Yes
Start/stop collection from the system Yes
Condition based Collection Support No
Python Expression Tags Yes
Note: Though the Minimum Poll Interval supported by the Windows Performance Collector is 1 second, it is recommended to set the interval to 5 seconds when adding large number of tags for proper collection of data.