Some organizations do not provide admin accounts with write permission to the root C:\ directory. The install kits of most PI products copy the setup.ini to C:\pisetup.ini, and then write the logs to C:\ before moving them to %pipc%\dat, both of which require write permission to C:\. The only workaround for now is to find someone with that permission to run the kit (typically an IT member).

It would be helping to have a utility do a complete uninstall of all the PI products from a machine including registry keys and hidden files.

The PI Square blogs on containers are enticing. I am looking forward to rapid deployment of OSIsoft products in containers.

Run the PI Server within Docker (https://www.docker.com/) to get better economies of scale. 

Might already be possible, but need advice supporting this architecture.

(from case 939560)

I kindly request you add an enhancement request to allow individual MSIs to be extracted from the install kit. On numerous occasions, I’ve had upgrade/install failures that could be easily overcome by re-running the affected MSI individually, as opposed to from the wrapper.

In Control Panel → Programs and Features, when you click on the PI programs in general (i.e. not just those that are part of PI Server), you will see that most of them use an HTTP link for their "Help link", "Support link", and "Update information". Please use the HTTPS versions of links. This would help show that OSIsoft cares about the privacy of their customers. It would also be more accurate since the HTTP links redirect to HTTPS.

In verifying the OPC DA server DCOM setting you need to use the OPCclient to check PI tags values. In the OPC DA server 2017 you need the latest version of OPCclient (was not in OCP client tools) to allow to connect correctly to the OPC DA server 2017. If the OPCclient was in the OPC DA server 2017 I would not had needed to go down load OPC Tools kit.

Currently, the PI AF Client installation allows the user to select a default PI Data Archive and default AF server but not a default AF database. It would be nice, especially for silent installations, to be able to specify the default AF database upon installation.

Regulations and rules require pre-installation approval and documentation of all programs installed on a machine. Please provide an installer or a method of installation that prevents the installer from appearing in Programs & Features.

Furthermore, always provide a comprehensive, detailed list of programs that will be/can be installed in each installation kit.

By default, PIHOME is "C:\Program Files (x86)\PIPC" and PIHOME64 is "C:\Program Files\PIPC\". For new installations, please consider either having the terminating \ on both or removing the terminating \ from both. The current inconsistency can confuse anyone that tries to write the path to anything within the PIHOME or PIHOME64 folder.

Some examples of names of the local groups that PI adds are:
AFQueryEngines
AFServers
PI Buffering Administrators
PI Connector Administrators
PI Web API Admins

Please consider making the naming more consistent. For example:
PI Asset Framework Query Engines
PI Asset Framework Servers
PI Buffer Subsystem Administrators
PI Connector Administrators
PI Web API Administrators

At the very least, please make sure that the group names start with "PI" so that the PI groups are grouped together when the groups are sorted in alphabetical order, much like what was done for the PI services.

As a user, I would like to reduce the time and effort to deploy the PI Server in IaaS provider such as Azure and AWS.

Currently, when you run the PI Server install kit to perform an upgrade, existing PI Server components cannot be unselected, and so they are upgraded. This gives the impression that they cannot be uninstalled, but they can actually be uninstalled by modifying the installation in Programs And Features in the Control Panel. This is unintuitive.

Please allow PI Server components to be uninstalled at the same time as upgrading other PI Server components, otherwise many of the legacy components will continue to live unnecessarily in many customers' PI systems.

I have a customer who would like to perform silent installs and be able to specify a different file path for the silent.ini file. Currently the silent installs only work if the unzipped setup kit is all in one folder.

A lot of times, install kits such as the one for PI DataLink contain an older version of PI AF Client than the one that is included in the PI AF Client install kit.

To make things easier for customers, whenever PI AF Client is updated, consider updating all install kits that contain PI AF Client.