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.
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.
Configuration examples for connection management
The following examples show steps for setting up connection management for various connection units and various systems.
Example: Configuring for an SSL connection
This example shows the steps to configure CM to listen for SSL connections from database clients.
Example: Using the GSKit encryption library
This example shows the steps to configure CM to listen for SSL connection using the GSKit encryption library.

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.
        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.
        Example of configuring connection management for a high-availability cluster
        This example shows steps that are required to configure connection management for a high-availability cluster.
        Example of configuring connection management for a grid or replicate set
        You can use a Connection Manager to route client connections for the replication servers of a grid or replicate set.
        Example of configuring connection management for a high-availability replication system
        You can use a Connection Manager to route client connections for the participants of a replicate set and to control failover for high-availability clusters that participate in Enterprise Replication.
        Example: Configuring connection management for untrusted networks
        This example shows steps that are required to configure connection management for an untrusted network.
        Example: Configuring for prioritizing connections and network monitoring
        You can install Connection Managers on the hosts of application servers, and then prioritize the connections between specific application servers and the primary server of a high-availability cluster. This configuration allows the highest priority application server to maintain its connection to the cluster's primary server if a portion of the network fails.
        Example: Configuring for an SSL connection
        This example shows the steps to configure CM to listen for SSL connections from database clients.
        Example: Using the OpenSSL encryption library
        This example shows the steps to configure CM to listen for SSL connection using the OpenSSL encryption library.
        Example: Using the GSKit encryption library
        This example shows the steps to configure CM to listen for SSL connection using the GSKit encryption library.
        Configuring a CM to connect to Oninit using SSL
        To configure a CM to connect to oninit using SSL, follow the steps in Configuring a client for SSL connections at Configuring a client for SSL connections.
        Configuring a client to connect to a CM using SSL
        A client can be configured to connect to a CM via SSL by following the same steps used to configure a client to connect to an Informix server via SSL. In this case the CM acts like a server. Follow the steps in Configuring a client for SSL connections at Configuring a client for SSL connections.
      - 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.

Example: Using the GSKit encryption library

This example shows the steps to configure CM to listen for SSL connection using the GSKit encryption library.

About this task

Use the gsk8capicmd utility of your GSKit installation.

Procedure

To configure cm1 to listen for an SSL connection, create a keystore file named cm1.p12 in the CM's $INFORMIXDIR/ssl directory.
```
$ gsk8capicmd -keydb -create -db cm1.p12 -pw test -type pkcs12 -expire 3650 -stash
```
Note: Ensure that this file is owned by the user running oncmsm (usually informix) and has 600 permissions.

Obtain the certificate, either creating it or importing it from a PEM file. Note its label.

 Example command for creating a certificate in the keystore:
$ gsk8capicmd -cert -create -db cm1.p12 -pw test -dn "CN=`hostname`" -size 2048 -label cm1ListeningCert -ca true -sigalg SHA256WithRSA

Example command for importing a certificate in a PEM file into the keystore:
$ gsk8capicmd -cert -add -db cm1.p12 -pw test -file filewithcertificatetoimport.pem -label cm1ListeningCert -format ascii -trust enable

In cm1's config file set "SSL_LABEL" to the certificate's label:
```
SSL_LABEL cm1ListeningCert 
```