Release Notes

Historian Release Notes

Table 1. What's New in HistorianThe following enhancements and new features have been added.
Description Tracking ID

Sending Collector Data to Alibaba Cloud

In addition to Google Cloud, AWS Cloud, and Azure Cloud, you can now send collector data to Alibaba Cloud via MQTT using Configuration Hub as well as the RemoteCollectorConfigurator utility.

 F60805

Installing Operations Hub and Historian Web-based Clients on the Same Machine

You can now install Operations Hub and Web-based Clients on the same machine. To facilitate this enhancement, after you install Operations Hub, if you install Web-based Clients on the same machine, the FQDN is disabled and populated with the value you provided while installing Operations Hub (and vice versa).
Note: When Tomcat is restarted, the CPU utilization increases for some time. Therefore, we suggest that you restart only one instance of Tomcat at a time.
F59167

Access to Cross-Domain Historian Systems

You can now access Historian across various domains regardless of the domain to which your user account belongs. For instructions on providing cross-domain Historian access, refer to About Accessing Cross-Domain Historian .

 F59177

UAA Reader Client Creation Using the UAA Config Tool

To fetch Historian data, previously, you had to manually add each user to iH security groups. Only then the users could fetch the data. Now, this process has been simplified. All you must do is create a UAA client. The UAA client will be automatically added to the iH Readers security group on the server side. You can then use the client to fetch Historian data using REST APIs. For instructions, refer to Create a UAA Reader Client Using the UAA Config Tool.

Licensing Enhancements for a Distributed Environment

To set up a distributed/mirror environment, previously, the Enterprise license was used, which you could apply for one primary and two distributed/mirror servers. Now, the licensing is separate for primary and distributed/mirror servers:
  • For the primary server alone, use the Enterprise license.
  • For all the distributed/mirror servers, use the new Distributed license. A new license bit, Distributed Historian, is enabled for the distributed/mirror servers, indicating that you have applied the Distributed license.
 F60333

Automatic Creation of Collector Instances

When you install collectors, if iFIX and/or CIMPLICITY are installed on the same machine as the collectors, instances of the following collectors are created automatically:
  • The iFIX collector
  • The iFIX Alarms & Events collector
  • The OPC Classic Data Access collector for CIMPLICITY
  • The OPC Classic Alarms and Events collector for CIMPLICITY
You can begin using these collectors, or create more instances as needed.

When you uninstall collectors, these instances of collectors (the ones that are created during the installation of collectors) are deleted automatically.
  • US490172
  • US490173
  • US491452

New Utility to Update UAA Server Details

If you have changed the UAA server used by Web-based Clients, you can now update the UAA server details for the Historian server without the need to reinstall it. The Historian server and Web-based Clients will then point to the same UAA server, which is required for you to access Web-based Clients (such as Configuration Hub, Trend Client, the Web Admin console, and REST APIs). To facilitate this enhancement, the UAA Configuration tool has been introduced. Using this tool, you can provide the UAA server details that you have provided during the installation of Web-based Clients.

For instructions on using this tool, refer to Change the UAA Server.

 US494635
Table 2. Resolved IssuesThe following issues have been resolved.
Description Tracking ID
Previously, an error occurred during the installation of Client Tools and Excel Add-In for Historian 8.1 because the DLLs were not registered correctly. This issue has been resolved. DE138680, DE146006
Previously, you could not set up Historian in a clustered environment because loading the Historian DLLs failed. This issue has been resolved. DE162167
Previously, there was a discrepancy between the alarms logged in iFIX and the Historian Alarms and Events database. This issue has been resolved. DE161609
Previously, several mdmp files were created in C:\Program Files\GE\Historian\historian-tomcat. This issue has been resolved. DE161705
Previously, when you attempted to fetch a list of OPC servers using the Get OPC Server API, an error occurred. This was applicable to the following OPC servers:
  • OPC Data Access
  • OPC Historical Data Access
  • OPC Alarms and Events
This issue has been resolved.		 DE147276
Previously, if you upgraded collectors, you could not manage the OPC collectors. An error message appeared in the CollectorManager.shw file. This issue has been resolved. DE151366
Previously, after you upgraded Historian, the File Collector service was not available. This issue has been resolved. DE156501
Previously, if you upgraded Historian from a version earlier than 8.1, by default, storing future data was enabled. This issue has been resolved. DE149376
Previously, when you attempted to use the Client Access API, a DataParc List Tags error occurred. This issue has been resolved now. DE153966
Previously, after you purged and restored alarms data, the restored data did not match the original data. This issue has been resolved. DE109010
Previously, when you fetched alarms data, duplicate alarm comments appeared. This issue has been resolved. DE120509
Previously, when you queried for interpolated data using the Excel Add-In, the expected result was not returned. This issue has been resolved. DE140629
Previously, the OPC Classic DA collector crashed if a tag of the float or integer data type was configured as a variable string. This issue has been resolved. DE158901
Table 3. LimitationsThe following limitations exist in the product.
Description
You can install Configuration Hub only in the C drive.
Workaround:
  1. Create Configuration Hub server certificates.
  2. Start the ConfigHubNGINXService service.
  3. Using the Web Based Clients Configuration tool, provide the UAA and Configuration Hub details, test the connection, and select Resgister to re-register the Historian plugin with Configuration Hub.
If an iFIX collector instance created in version 9.0 exists, after you upgrade collectors, another instance of the iFIX collector is created. Because of this, the Remote Collector Manager (RCM) will not work correctly. Therefore, if you want to use RCM, you must delete one of the instances. If needed, you can manually create another instance of the iFIX collector using Configuration Hub or the RemoteCollectorConfigurator utility. This is applicable to the iFIX Alarms and Events collector as well.
If the Configuration Manager service is down, you cannot query tags and data in a horizontally scalable system. However, you can query tags and data in the following scenarios:
  • The Historian system contains only one node, which is installed as the primary mirror Historian server.
  • The Historian system contains only one mirror location, and there are no data stores in the distributed locations.
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, pause data collection, resume data collection, or modify an instance of offline collectors. In addition, you cannot compress network messages. You can, however, enable the debug mode and delete the collector instance.
Configuration Hub is not supported in a clustered Historian environment.
If you have logged in to Operations Hub, and then if you try to access Web-based Clients, and vice versa, an error occurs. This is because the user credentials of the first application to which you have logged in are used to log in to the other one as well.
Workaround: Try one of the following options:
  • Add the scopes of each application user to the other application.
  • If you log in to Web-based Clients first, on the login page of Operations Hub, re-log in with the Operations Hub user. If you log in to Operations Hub first, log out of Operations Hub, log in to Web-based Clients, and then log in to Operations Hub, using the credentials of the respective users for each application.
Table 4. Known IssuesThe following issues are unresolved in this release.
Description Tracking ID
During Web-based Clients installation, if you provide an external UAA and Configuration Hub, and if the public https port numbers of these two machines do not match, you cannot access the external Configuration Hub from the current machine.

For example, suppose you have installed Web-based Clients on machine A, which points to the UAA and Configuration Hub installed on machine B. If the public https port numbers of machines A and B do not match, you cannot access Configuration Hub of machine B from machine A (although you can access it locally from machine B).

Workaround: Perform the following steps on the machine on which you have installed Configuration Hub (machine B):
  1. Access the following folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\GE\ConfigurationHub\Web\conf\confighub
  2. Access the file that contains the details of the machine from which you want to access external Configuration Hub (machine A). The file name begins with the host name of machine A.
  3. In the line that contains the details of the UAA server (for example, proxy_pass https://machine_B.Domain.com:Port/uaa/), change the port number to match the public https port number of machine B.
  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Restart the following services:
    • ConfigHubContainerService
    • ConfigHubNGINXService
    • ConfigHubStorageService
 DE162153
If you install Configuration Hub using iFIX, then install Web-based Clients on another machine with local UAA, and then register the Historian plugin with Configuration Hub, testing the connection to Configuration Hub fails. Even after you add the IP addresses of both the machines to the hosts file, the issue is not resolved.

Workaround: Register the Historian plugin on the machine on which you have installed Web-based Clients, install the UAA certificate, and then restart the browser.

 DE161847
If a tag name contains the following special characters, you cannot retrieve the tag data using REST APIs, the Web Admin console, or Trend Client:
  • ;
  • /
  • &
  • +
  • %
 DE160889
If you install only Client Tools, the SDK sample is not downloaded. DE161595
When you upgrade to Historian 9.1, after installing Web-based Clients, a message asking you to restart the machine does not appear. Because of this, sometimes, you cannot access Web-based Components such as Configuration Hub, Trend Client, the Web Admin console, and REST APIs.
Workaround: Restart the machine, or start the following services:
  • GE Historian PostgreSQL Database
  • GE Historian Tomcat Server
  • GE Operations Hub Httpd Reverse Proxy
  • GE Operations Hub UAA PostgreSQL Database
  • GE Operations Hub UAA Tomcat Web Server
  • GE UAA External IdP Configuration Service
  • GE Security App Service
 DE160543
If you upgrade the Server-to-Server collector from 8.1, you cannot send data to Azure IoT Hub using that collector instance. This is because the syntax of the connection string has changed. You can, however, send data by adding another collector instance.

For information on the connection string syntax, refer to Collector Instance Parameters.

 DE157795
You cannot set up Historian in a cluster environment using Historian.dll. DE159583
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 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
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
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
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
You cannot browse for tags in the Server-to-Server and Server-to-Distributor collectors if Windows security is enabled. DE135459
The OPC UA DA collector stops working for unsolicited tags after you disconnect and reconnect to the source. DE135433
In Trend Client, if you have used a calculated data query, and have provided an interval for the data, the query results appear only for half of the interval that you have selected. DE134193
If you attempt to log in to the web admin console as user belonging to the ihsecurity group, and if you use LDAP, an error occurs. DE134898
Archive backup is not functional in the web admin.

Workaround: Perform archive backup using the ihArchiverBackup tool or thick client.

 DE124038
File, Calculation, and Simulator collector services are removed after installing the Client tools.

Workaround: Reinstall the collectors after installing the Client tools.

 DE123472
When you use Excel Add-in Client tools for Mirror Node the Data Archiver Services are not appearing in services. DE123374
Collectors services are deleted after server is uninstalled.

Workaround: Reinstall the collectors after installing the Client tools.

 DE123370
When you install Alarms and Events, Excel Add-In is uninstalled.

Workaround: Reinstall Excel Add-In after installing Alarms and Events.

 DE123292
You cannot export only one tag using Excel Add-In.

Workaround: Enter ? after the tag name that you want to export.

 DE123255
When Collector Compression is enabled and set to Absolute, the Compression Timeout Value is not retained. DE123116
When compression in turned on with compression timeout, invalid data points are logged. DE123049
The Max. Recovery Time property cannot be for Server-to-Server Distributor. DE122998
The Tags to Recalculate section is disabled in the Recalculate window of the Server-to-Server Distributor. DE122986
When you uninstall collectors, the OPC Collector shortcut is not removed. DE122882
The second data point is not available after data collection is disabled and enabled at source in the Server-to-Server collector. DE122660
AdoptOpenJDK is installed in only C drive even if you choose to install Historian in any other drive. DE112542
Uninstalling Historian 7.1 SIM1 fails on some of the machines.

Workaround: Stop all Historian Server services and then uninstall Historian 7.1 SIM 1.

 DE114135
Tags that are associated with ENUM are not correctly displayed in the destination machine when connected using OPC Classic HDA Collector. DE113677
Compression is not applied for OPC Classic HDA cloud collector. DE114500
Prefix is not added to the messages even if message prefix is enabled in the Server-to-Server collector configuration. DE113857
Tag level Security - Administrator group user cannot browse and edit the tag if Read or Write group is already configured. DE115633
If a tag is renamed (not permanent rename - Aliasing), although the tag name is available for selection in the browse tag list (shown in blue color), if you try to select and add the tag, an error message appears. DE91020
In Excel Add-In, the search message functionality does not return expected output when start/end time format is mm/dd/yyyyy HH:mm:ss. DE93928