Tail and OSI PI Integration

Input and output integration overview

<p>The Tail Telegraf plugin collects metrics by tailing specified log files, capturing new log entries in real-time for further analysis.</p>

<p>This setup converts Telegraf into a lightweight PI Web API publisher, letting you push any Telegraf metric into the OSI PI System with a simple HTTP POST.</p>

Integration details

Tail

<p>The tail plugin is designed to continuously monitor and parse log files, making it ideal for real-time log analysis and monitoring. It mimics the functionality of the Unix <code>tail</code> command, allowing users to specify a file or pattern and begin reading new lines as they are added. Key features include the ability to follow log-rotated files, start reading from the end of a file, and support various parsing formats for the log messages. Users can customize the plugin through various configuration options, such as specifying file encoding, the method for watching file updates, and filter settings for processing log data. This plugin is particularly valuable in environments where log data is critical for monitoring application performance and diagnosing issues.</p>

OSI PI

<p>OSI PI is an data management and analytics platform used in energy, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure. The PI Web API is its REST interface, exposing endpoints such as <strong>/piwebapi/streams/{WebId}/value</strong> that accept JSON payloads containing a <code>Timestamp</code> and <code>Value</code>. By pairing Telegraf’s flexible HTTP output with this endpoint, any metric Telegraf collects—SNMP counters, Modbus readings, Kubernetes stats—can be written directly into PI without installing proprietary interfaces. The configuration above authenticates with Basic or Kerberos, serializes each batch to JSON, and renders a minimal body template that aligns with PI Web API’s single-value write contract. Because Telegraf already supports batching, TLS, proxies, and custom headers, this approach scales from edge gateways to cloud VMs, allowing organizations to back-fill historical data, stream live telemetry, or mirror non-PI sources (e.g., Prometheus) into the PI data archive. It also sidesteps older SDK dependencies and enables hybrid architectures where PI remains on-prem while Telegraf agents run in containers or IIoT devices.</p>

Configuration

Tail

OSI PI

Input and output integration examples

Tail

<ol> <li> <p><strong>Real-Time Server Health Monitoring</strong>: Implement the Tail plugin to parse web server access logs in real-time, providing immediate visibility into user activity, error rates, and performance metrics. By visualizing this log data, operations teams can quickly identify and respond to spikes in traffic or errors, enhancing system reliability and user experience.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Centralized Log Management</strong>: Utilize the Tail plugin to aggregate logs from multiple sources across a distributed system. By configuring each service to send its logs to a centralized location via the Tail plugin, teams can simplify log analysis and ensure that all relevant data is accessible from a single interface, streamlining troubleshooting processes.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Security Incident Detection</strong>: Use this plugin to monitor authentication logs for unauthorized access attempts or suspicious activity. By setting up alerts on certain log messages, teams can leverage this plugin to enhance security postures and respond promptly to potential security threats, reducing the risk of breaches and increasing overall system integrity.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Dynamic Application Performance Insights</strong>: Integrate with analytics tools to create real-time dashboards that display application performance metrics based on log data. This setup not only helps developers diagnose bottlenecks and inefficiencies but also allows for proactive performance tuning and resource allocation, optimizing application behavior under varying loads.</p> </li> </ol>

OSI PI

<ol> <li> <p><strong>Remote Pump Stations Telemetry Bridge</strong>: Install Telegraf on edge gateways at oil-field pump stations, gather flow-meter and vibration readings over Modbus, and POST them to the PI Web API. Operations teams view real-time data in PI Vision without deploying heavyweight PI interfaces, while bandwidth-friendly batching keeps satellite links economical.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Green-Energy Micro-Grid Dashboard</strong>: Export inverter, battery, and weather metrics from MQTT into Telegraf, which relays them to PI. PI AF analytics can calculate real-time power balance and feed a campus dashboard; historical deltas inform sustainability reports.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Brownfield SCADA Modernization</strong>: Legacy PLCs logged to CSV are ingested by Telegraf’s <code>tail</code> input; each row is parsed and immediately sent to PI via HTTP, creating a live data stream that co-exists with archival files while the SCADA upgrade proceeds incrementally.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Synthetic Data Generator for Training</strong>: Telegraf’s <code>exec</code> input can run a script that emits simulated sensor patterns. Posting those metrics to a non-production PI server through the Web API supplies realistic datasets for PI Vision training sessions without risking production tags.</p> </li> </ol>

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