Home
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.
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.
The Scheduler
You can use the Scheduler to create jobs to run administrative tasks or collect information at predictable times. The Scheduler uses SQL statements instead of operating system job scheduling tools.

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.
    - 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.
      - The Scheduler
        You can use the Scheduler to create jobs to run administrative tasks or collect information at predictable times. The Scheduler uses SQL statements instead of operating system job scheduling tools.
        Scheduler tables
        The Scheduler tables are located in the sysadmin database and contain information about tasks and sensors.
        Built-in tasks and sensors
        The Scheduler contains built-in tasks and sensors that run automatically.
        Creating a task
        You can create a Scheduler task to perform a specific action at specific times.
        Creating a sensor
        You can create a Scheduler sensor to collect and store data about the database server.
        Actions for task and sensors
        The action for a task or sensor is an SQL statement or routine that performs one or more operations.
        Creating a group
        You can create a group to organize Scheduler tasks and sensors.
        Creating a threshold
        You can create a threshold to determine under what conditions a Scheduler task or sensor is run.
        Creating an alert
        You can create an alert as part of the action of a Scheduler task or sensor.
        Monitor the scheduler
        You can monitor Scheduler threads that are in progress with the onstat -g dbc command. You can view information about tasks and sensors that have completed in the ph_run table.
        Modifying the scheduler
        You can modify the properties of Scheduler tasks, sensors, alerts, thresholds, or groups. You can modify both built-in properties and properties that you added.
      - Remote administration with the SQL administration API
        You can use the SQL administration API to perform remote administration tasks by using SQL statements.
      - Query drill-down
        You can use query drill-down, or SQL tracing, to gather statistical information about each SQL statement that was run and to analyze statement history.
  - 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.

The Scheduler

You can use the Scheduler to create jobs to run administrative tasks or collect information at predictable times. The Scheduler uses SQL statements instead of operating system job scheduling tools.

The Scheduler is controlled by a set of tables in the sysadmin database.

The Scheduler has four different job types that you can choose from:

Task: Runs an action at a specific time and frequency.
Sensor: Runs an action at a specific time and frequency to collect data, create a results table, store the data in the results table, and purge old data after a specified time.
Startup task: A task that runs only when the server moves from quiescent mode to online mode.
Startup sensor: A sensor that runs only when the server moves from quiescent mode to online mode.

The action of a task or sensor can be one or more SQL statements, user-defined routines, or stored procedures.

In addition to defining an action for a task or sensor, you can also use the Scheduler to:

Associate tasks and sensors into functional groups
Track the execution time and return value each time a task or sensor is run
Define alerts with varying severity
Define thresholds to control when tasks or sensors are run

The Scheduler contains built-in tasks and sensors that run automatically. You can modify the built-in tasks and sensors and define your own tasks and sensors.

Disk space requirements

The Scheduler tables and sensor results tables can use significant amounts of disk space.

You can use the following formula to estimate the disk usage for one sensor:

Number of rows collected * size of the row collected * the frequency of data collection per day * the retention period

Repeat this estimate for all sensors and you can determine a close estimate of the space required.

You can reduce the amount of data stored by decreasing the frequency of data collection or shortening the retention period by updating the ph_task table.

You can move the sysadmin database to a different dbspace by using the SQL administration API, however, all existing data in the database will be lost.

For more information about the sysadmin database, see the Informix® Administrator's Reference.