PA Agent Utility
The Performance Advisor (PA) agent allows you to establish a connection with PTC. You can choose to install the PA Agent on a machine that is different from the one hosting Windchill. After installation, the PA agent can then be used for transporting diagnostic data generated from the Windchill server back to PTC. To be able to transport the data through the PA agent, appropriate configurations on the Windchill server side must be set.
Installing PA Agent on a Different Machine
To Install PA Agent,
1. In Windchill, click > and then click Windchill Performance Advisor.
2. In the Windchill Performance Advisor dialog box, click the Configure Agent tab.
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The Configure Agent tab is available only when the value of the Windchill preference PA Agent is set to Yes. By default, the value of PA Agent preference is set to No.
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3. Click the Download Agent button. The PA agent installer is downloaded as a zip file (paagent.zip).
4. Transfer the paagent.zip file to the machine where you wish to install the PA agent and unzip the file.
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You can also open Windchill on the required machine and download the paagent.zip file there.
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5. Run the config.bat file and specify,
◦ The location of the extracted paagent.zip file and the location of the diagnostic data. The location of the diagnostic data must be same as provided in Configure Agent tab of the Windchill Performance Advisor utility.
◦ Your credentials for the www.support.ptc.com to authenticate with PTC.
6. Right-click the run_paagent.bat file and from the context menu, select Run as administrator. The PA agent is now installed on the required machine.
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The execution of the run_paagent.bat file happens as a local process and hence, if the machine, restarts, the BAT file has to be re-executed to start the PA agent. To avoid this, you can add the BAT file to your system scheduler.
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PA Agent Commands
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The PA commands are applicable only on the machine where Windchill is installed.
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PA Agent Utility is a command line utility that is used to perform the following operations:
• PAAgent_Start - Start Performance Advisor agent process
• PAAgent_Stop - Stop Performance Advisor Agent process
• PAAgentService_Start - Start Performance Advisor agent service
• PAAgentService_Stop - Stop Performance Advisor agent service
• PAAgentService_Uninstall - Uninstall Performance Advisor agent
Command
java com.ptc.paa.config.PAAgentUtility PAAgent_Start
On RHEL 8, the Performance Advisor agent runs as a daemon process. Hence, if the machine is restarted or the Performance Advisor agent application terminal is closed, use the PA Agent Utility to start the agent.