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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.
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.
Configuring connection management
To configure connection management, you must install software, set environments and connectivity information, create Connection Manager configuration files, and run the oncmsm utility.
Defining sqlhosts information for connection management
You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for client applications that connect to Connection Managers, Connection Managers that connect to database servers, and database servers that are part of a Connection Manager connection unit.

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
      - 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.
        Configuring connection management
        To configure connection management, you must install software, set environments and connectivity information, create Connection Manager configuration files, and run the oncmsm utility.
        Creating Connection Manager configuration files
        Configuring environments and setting configuration parameters for connection management
        Before you start a Connection Manager, you must configure its environment.
        Defining sqlhosts information for connection management
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for client applications that connect to Connection Managers, Connection Managers that connect to database servers, and database servers that are part of a Connection Manager connection unit.
        Defining sqlhosts information for connection management of high-availability clusters
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of high-availability clusters.
        sqlhosts for HA clusters that use secure ports
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of high-availability clusters. If Connection Managers, database servers, or client applications are outside of a trusted network, you must also create an encrypted password file for security.
        sqlhosts for HA clusters that use DRDA
        Connection Managers support Distributed Relational Database Architecture™ (DRDA®) connections for high-availability clusters. You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of high-availability clusters that use DRDA.
        sqlhosts for HA clusters that use DRDA and secure ports
        Connection Managers support Distributed Relational Database Architecture™ (DRDA®) connections for high-availability clusters. You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of high-availability clusters that use DRDA. If Connection Managers, database servers, or client applications are outside of a trusted network, you must also create an encrypted password file for security.
        sqlhosts for grids and replicate sets
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of replicate sets or grids.
        sqlhosts for grids and replicate sets that use secure ports
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of replicate sets or grids. If Connection Managers, database servers, or client applications are outside of a trusted network, you must also create an encrypted password file for security.
        sqlhosts for HA replication systems
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of high-availability replication systems.
        sqlhosts for HA replication systems that use secure ports
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of high-availability replication systems. If Connection Managers, database servers, or client applications are outside of a trusted network, you must also create an encrypted password file for security.
        sqlhosts for server sets
        You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for connection management of server sets.
        Creating a password file for connecting to database servers on untrusted networks
        If a client, Connection Manager, or any of the database servers that a Connection Manager connects to are on an untrusted network, you can create encrypted password files to verify connection requests.
        Starting Connection Managers on UNIX™ and Linux™
        Use the oncmsm utility to start a Connection Manager.
        Starting Connection Managers on Windows™
        Use the oncmsm utility to start a Connection Manager.
        Stopping connection management
        When you no longer want a Connection Manager to manage connection units, run the oncmsm utility to stop the Connection Manager instance.
        Monitoring and troubleshooting connection management
        Tools are available to monitor connection management, and help you diagnose potential problems.
        Strategies for increasing availability with Connection Managers
        You can increase the resiliency of your client/server communication environment.
        Configuration examples for connection management
        The following examples show steps for setting up connection management for various connection units and various systems.
      - 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.

Defining sqlhosts information for connection management

You must define sqlhosts network-connectivity information for client applications that connect to Connection Managers, Connection Managers that connect to database servers, and database servers that are part of a Connection Manager connection unit.

Before you begin

If Connection Managers or clients are installed on hosts where database servers are not installed, you must create a sqlhosts file on each host.

About this task

Entries in an sqlhosts file can specify connection information for the following connection-unit components:

Database servers
Aliases for database servers that are using secure ports
Connection Manager service-level agreements (SLAs)
Groups that can contain database servers, database-server aliases, or SLAs.

All database servers that a Connection Manager connects to must be listed in the sqlhosts file that the Connection Manager uses. If the Connection Manager is monitoring a high-availability cluster, the sqlhosts file the Connection Manager uses must contain entries for all cluster servers.

Procedure

Create entries in each database server's host sqlhosts file.
You can modify one sqlhosts file, and then distribute it to the hosts of other database servers.
Create entries in each Connection Manager's host sqlhosts file.
You can create one sqlhosts file, and then distribute it to the hosts of other Connection Managers.
Create entries in each client application's host sqlhosts file.
You can create one sqlhosts file, and then distribute it to the hosts of other client applications.
If a host has multiple database servers that are installed on it, if the sqlhosts file is in a directory other than $INFORMIXDIR/etc, or if you are using a network-connectivity file other than $INFORMIXDIR/etc/sqlhosts, set the host's INFORMIXSQLHOSTS environment variable to the location of the sqlhosts file.

What to do next

If sqlhosts file entries use the s=6 option to define secure ports, use the information in the sqlhosts file to create a password file.