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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.
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.
High-availability cluster configuration
Configuring clusters
Configure clusters by securing confirming the hardware, operating-system, and database requirements. You also set up a security protocol and the secure connection.
Configuring secure connections for high-availability clusters
For a high-availability cluster to function, the database servers must establish trusted connection with each other. Secure connections between cluster servers by using a trusted-host file on each cluster server and including the connection security option in sqlhosts file entries.

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
    - 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.
      - Strategies for high availability and scalability
        HCL Informix® database software can be customized to create the appropriate high availability and scalability solution to match your business goals and environment.
      - High-availability cluster configuration
        Plan for a high-availability cluster
        Configuring clusters
        Configure clusters by securing confirming the hardware, operating-system, and database requirements. You also set up a security protocol and the secure connection.
        Hardware and operating-system requirements for clusters
        For a high-availability cluster to function, your hardware must meet certain requirements.
        Database and data requirements for clusters
        For a high-availability cluster to function, your database and data must meet certain requirements.
        Database server configuration requirements for clusters
        Configuring secure connections for high-availability clusters
        For a high-availability cluster to function, the database servers must establish trusted connection with each other. Secure connections between cluster servers by using a trusted-host file on each cluster server and including the connection security option in sqlhosts file entries.
        Starting HDR for the First Time
        Remote standalone secondary servers
        Shared disk secondary servers
      - Connection management through the Connection Manager
        Connection Managers can control automatic failover for high-availability clusters, monitor client connections and direct requests to appropriate database servers, act as proxy servers and handle client/server communication, and prioritize connections between application servers and the primary server of a high-availability cluster. Connection Managers support high-availability clusters, replicate sets, server sets, and grids.
      - Cluster failover, redirection, and restoration
        To maintain availability, you must plan for the failover of primary servers, redirecting client connections from unavailable servers, and restoring the cluster to its original configuration after a failure.
    - 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.

Configuring secure connections for high-availability clusters

For a high-availability cluster to function, the database servers must establish trusted connection with each other. Secure connections between cluster servers by using a trusted-host file on each cluster server and including the connection security option in sqlhosts file entries.

About this task

The secure ports that are specified in sqlhosts files are used only for communication between database servers. Client applications cannot connect to secure ports.

Procedure

To configure a trusted environment for replication, complete the following steps for each cluster server:

Edit the sqlhosts file on each host that contains a cluster server:
1. Add an entry for each cluster server that is running on that host, and include the s=6 option.
2. Add an entry for each other cluster server that participates in the cluster, and do not include the s=6 option.
Set the nettype field of the sqlhosts file or registry and the NETTYPE configuration parameter to a network protocol such as ontlitcp or onsoctcp so that the database servers on two different computers can communicate with each other.
Do not specify a non-network protocol such as onipcshm, onipcstr, or onipcnmp.
Specify trusted-host information.
Trusted-host information can be specified in the following ways:
- Create a hosts.equiv file in the $INFORMIXDIR/etc directory, and then manually add entries to the file.
- Create a trusted-host file in the $INFORMIXDIR/etc directory, and then manually add entries to the file. You must set the REMOTE_SERVER_CFG configuration parameter to the trusted-host file's name and set the S6_USE_REMOTE_SERVER_CFG configuration parameter to 1.
- Run the admin() or task() function with the cdr add trustedhost argument, and specify trusted-host information. Trusted-host information that is specified by the cdr add trustedhost argument propagates to all servers in the high-availability cluster. Do not run this function if you have manually entered trusted-host information on any of the database servers in a high-availability cluster or Enterprise Replication domain.
Create a server alias for running utilities and client applications.
For example, set the INFORMIXSERVER environment variable to the alias to run utilities such as onstat and ontape and client applications such as DB-Access.