Google Cloud Storage and OSI PI Integration

Input and output integration overview

The Google Cloud Storage plugin collects metrics from specified Google Cloud Storage buckets, providing insight into storage usage and performance.

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.

Integration details

Google Cloud Storage

The Google Cloud Storage Telegraf plugin enables the collection of metrics from specified Google Cloud Storage buckets. As organizations increasingly rely on cloud storage solutions for their data management, the ability to monitor the performance and utilization of these resources becomes essential. This plugin is particularly useful for tracking how storage is used, understanding data patterns, and ensuring operational efficiency. By integrating with Google Cloud Storage APIs, it allows users to gather insights from their cloud environments, feeding metrics directly into monitoring systems for further analysis. The plugin supports various configuration options, enabling users to customize the data collection process based on their specific needs.

OSI PI

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 /piwebapi/streams/{WebId}/value that accept JSON payloads containing a Timestamp and Value. 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.

Configuration

Google Cloud Storage

[[inputs.google_cloud_storage]]
  bucket = "my-bucket"
  # key_prefix = "my-bucket"
  offset_key = "offset_key"
  objects_per_iteration = 10
  data_format = "influx"
  # credentials_file = "path/to/my/creds.json"

OSI PI

[[outputs.http]]
  ## PI Web API endpoint for writing a single value to a PI Point by Web ID
  url = "https://${PI_HOST}/piwebapi/streams/${WEB_ID}/value"

  ## Use POST for each batch
  method       = "POST"
  content_type = "application/json"

  ## Basic-auth header (base64-encoded "DOMAIN\\user:password")
  headers = { Authorization = "Basic ${BASIC_AUTH}" }

  ## Serialize Telegraf metrics as JSON
  data_format           = "json"
  json_timestamp_units  = "1ms"

  ## Render the JSON body that PI Web API expects
  body_template = """
  {{ range .Metrics -}}
  { "Timestamp": "{{ .timestamp | formatDate \"2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00\" }}", "Value": {{ index .fields 0 }} }
  {{ end -}}
  """

  ## Tune networking / batching if needed
  # timeout     = "10s"
  # batch_size  = 1

Input and output integration examples

Google Cloud Storage

1. Automated Backup Monitoring: Utilize the Google Cloud Storage plugin to regularly monitor the status of backup files stored in a Cloud Storage bucket. By configuring the plugin to track file metrics, organizations can automate alerts if backup sizes deviate from expected patterns, ensuring that data protection processes are functioning properly and any anomalies are promptly addressed.

2. Cost Optimization Insights: Integrate this plugin into a cost management tool to analyze the usage patterns of Cloud Storage. By collecting metrics on file sizes and access frequencies, teams can optimize their storage solutions and make informed decisions about data retention policies, potentially reducing unnecessary storage costs and improving resource allocation.

3. Compliance and Auditing: Use the plugin to generate metrics that aid in compliance verification for data stored in Google Cloud Storage. By providing detailed insights into data access and storage usage, organizations can ensure adherence to regulatory requirements, helping in audits and aligning with best practices for data governance.

4. Performance Benchmarking: Deploy the plugin to benchmark the performance of data retrieval and storage operations in Google Cloud Storage. By analyzing metrics over time, teams can identify performance bottlenecks or inefficiencies, allowing them to optimize their applications and infrastructure that depend on cloud storage services.

OSI PI

1. Remote Pump Stations Telemetry Bridge: 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.

2. Green-Energy Micro-Grid Dashboard: 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.

3. Brownfield SCADA Modernization: Legacy PLCs logged to CSV are ingested by Telegraf’s tail 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.

4. Synthetic Data Generator for Training: Telegraf’s exec 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.

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