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Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
System administration
These topics contain concepts, procedures, and reference information for database and database server administrators to use for managing and tuning HCL Informix® database servers.
Administrator's Guide
The Informix® Administrator's Guide provides the information required to administer HCL Informix.
The database server
Overview of database server configuration and administration
After you install HCL Informix®, you configure the database server system and start administering the database server.
Database server configuration
You must customize the database server properties and features by setting configuration parameters, create storage spaces, and configure connectivity. You can automate startup.
Connectivity configuration
The connectivity information allows a client application to connect to the database server on the network. You must prepare the connectivity information even if the client application and the database server are on the same computer or node.

Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
- System administration
  These topics contain concepts, procedures, and reference information for database and database server administrators to use for managing and tuning HCL Informix® database servers.
  - List of utilities
    HCL Informix® includes utilities and applications that you can use to perform administrative tasks and capture information about configuration and performance.
  - Administrator's Guide
    The Informix® Administrator's Guide provides the information required to administer HCL Informix.
    - The database server
      - Overview of database server configuration and administration
        After you install HCL Informix®, you configure the database server system and start administering the database server.
        Database server concepts
        To administer the database server, you must understand key concepts around storage, configuration, logging, CPU use, shared memory use, and automation.
        Environment configuration
        You configure your environment by setting environment variables and creating or modifying files that relate to the environment variables. You can control whether environment variables are set at the environment level, for a specific user, or for a database session. You must set environment variables for the database server environment and for the client environments.
        Database server configuration
        You must customize the database server properties and features by setting configuration parameters, create storage spaces, and configure connectivity. You can automate startup.
        Storage space creation and management
        You can create multiple storage spaces to store different types of objects, such as, data, indexes, logs, temporary objects, instead of storing everything in the root dbspace. The way that you distribute the data on disks affects the performance of the database server. You can configure the database server to both automatically minimize the storage space that data requires and automatically expand storage space as needed. You can segregate storage and processing resources among multiple client organization by configuring multitenancy.
        Automatic performance tuning
        You can set configuration parameters and Scheduler tasks to enable the database server to automatically adjust values that affect performance. By default, many automatic tuning configuration parameters and Scheduler tasks are set to solve common performance issues.
        Feature configuration
        You can configure the database server to support the types of optional functionality that you need.
        Connectivity configuration
        The connectivity information allows a client application to connect to the database server on the network. You must prepare the connectivity information even if the client application and the database server are on the same computer or node.
        Limit session resources
        You can limit the resources available to individual sessions to more evenly distribute system usage, and prevent resource monopolization.
        Automate startup and shutdown on UNIX™
        You can modify startup and shutdown scripts on UNIX™ to automatically start and shut down the database server.
        Automate startup on Windows™
        You can automate startup of the database server on Windows™.
        Database server maintenance tasks
        In addition to monitoring the database server for potential problems, regularly perform routine maintenance tasks to keep the server running smoothly and with optimum performance.
      - Client/server communication
        These topics explain the concepts and terms that you must understand in order to configure client/server communication.
      - Database server initialization
        The database server requires both disk-space initialization and shared-memory initialization.
    - Disk, memory, and process management
    - Logging and log administration
    - Fault tolerance
    - High availability and scalability
      A successful production environment requires database systems that are always available, with minimal if any planned outages, and that can be scaled quickly and easily as business requirements change.
    - Distributed data
    - Overview of automatic monitoring and corrective actions
      You can use the SQL administration API, the Scheduler, and drill-down queries to manage automatic maintenance, monitoring, and administrative tasks.
  - Administrator's Reference
    The Informix® Administrator's Reference includes comprehensive descriptions of HCL Informix configuration parameters, the system-monitoring interface (SMI) tables in the sysmaster database, the syntax of database server utilities such as onmode and onstat, logical-log records, disk structures, event alarms, and unnumbered error messages.
  - DB-Access User's Guide
    The Informix® DB-Access User's Guide describes how to use the DB-Access utility to access, modify, and retrieve information from Informix database servers.
  - High-Performance Loader User's Guide
    The describes how to use the HCL Informix® to load and unload large quantities of data efficiently to or from Informix databases.
  - Performance Guide
    The Informix® Performance Guide describes how to configure and operate your HCL Informix database server to improve overall system throughput and to improve the performance of SQL queries.
  - SNMP Subagent Guide
    The describes the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and the software that you need to use SNMP to monitor and manage HCL Informix® database servers and databases.
  - InformixHQ Guide
    InformixHQ is a modern web console for visualizing, monitoring, and managing your Informix server instances. It is purpose built for ease-of-use, scaling out, and optimizing DevOps needs. It provides critical performance management capabilities, monitoring how key performance metrics are changing over time and tracking how efficiently Informix is running your workload even when you’ve stepped away from your screen. Its monitoring system feeds directly into a customizable alerting system so you can be immediately alerted via email, Twilio, or PagerDuty whenever an issue occurs on one of your Informix database server instances. InformixHQ is designed to be scalable to efficiently manage and monitor as many Informix database server instances as you need. Moreover, it's a tool that can be shared by the DBAs, the app developers, the ops engineers, and management and accessed from any desktop, laptop, or mobile device. InformixHQ is the centralized hub for graphical monitoring, alerting, and administration of your Informix database servers.
- Backup and Restore Guide
  The Informix® Backup and Restore Guide describes how to use the Informix ON-Bar and ontape utilities to back up and restore database server data. These utilities enable you to recover your databases after data is lost or becomes corrupted due to hardware or software failure or accident.
- Enterprise Replication
  The HCL® Informix® Enterprise Replication Guide describes the concepts of data replication using Informix Enterprise Replication, including how to design your replication system, as well as administer and manage data replication throughout your enterprise.

Connectivity configuration

The connectivity information allows a client application to connect to the database server on the network. You must prepare the connectivity information even if the client application and the database server are on the same computer or node.

Informix® client/server connectivity information, the sqlhosts information, includes the database server name, the type of connection that a client can use to connect to the database server, the host name of the computer or node on which the database server runs, and the service name by which it is known. You do not need to specify all possible network connections in the sqlhosts information before you start the database server. However, to make a new connection available you must shut down the database server and then restart it.

The sqlhosts file contains connectivity information. You might also need to modify other connectivity and security files, depending on your needs.

When the database server is online, you can connect client applications and begin to create databases. Before you can access information in a database, the client application must connect to the database server environment. To connect to and disconnect from a database server, you can issue SQL statements from the client programs that are included in the , such as DB-Access, or API drivers.