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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 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.
Appendixes
Event Alarms
The database server provides a mechanism for automatically triggering administrative actions based on an event that occurs in the database server environment. This mechanism is the event-alarm feature.
Using ALARMPROGRAM to Capture Events
Customizing the ALARMPROGRAM Scripts
You can customize the ALARMPROGRAM scripts based on your environment.

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.
  - 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.
    - Configuring and monitoring Informix®
    - Administrative Utilities
    - SQL Administration API
    - Appendixes
      - Database server files
        Database server files are created in default directories, or in a directory that the relevant configuration parameter specifies. A database administrator might need to edit or examine the content of files that are used by the database server.
      - Troubleshooting errors
        Occasionally, a series of events causes the database server to return unexpected error codes.
      - Event Alarms
        The database server provides a mechanism for automatically triggering administrative actions based on an event that occurs in the database server environment. This mechanism is the event-alarm feature.
        Using ALARMPROGRAM to Capture Events
        Setting ALRM_ALL_EVENTS
        Writing Your Own Alarm Script
        Customizing the ALARMPROGRAM Scripts
        You can customize the ALARMPROGRAM scripts based on your environment.
        Precautions for Foreground Operations in Alarm Scripts
        To ensure continuous server availability, do not run certain foreground operations in an alarm script.
        Interpreting event alarm messages
        Some of the events that the database server reports to the message log trigger the alarm program. The class messages indicate the events that the database server reports.
        Events in the ph_alert Table
        All event alarms that are generated are inserted in the ph_alert table in the sysadmin database.
        Event Alarm Parameters
        Event alarms have five parameters that describe each event.
        Event alarm IDs
        The class ID for event alarms indicates the type of event. The event ID indicates the specific event.
        Connection Manager event alarm IDs
        The class ID for event alarms indicates the type of event. The event ID indicates the specific event.
      - Messages in the database server log
        Unnumbered messages are printed in the database server message log (online.log). The error messages include corrective actions.
      - Limits in Informix®
        This topic lists the system-level and table-level parameter limits, the system defaults, and the access capabilities of Informix®.
  - 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.

Customizing the ALARMPROGRAM Scripts

You can customize the ALARMPROGRAM scripts based on your environment.

Before you begin

The mail utility must already be present.

About this task

Follow these steps to customize the alarmprogram.[sh|bat] script. You can use alarmprogram.[sh|bat] instead of log_full.[sh|bat] to automate log backups.

Procedure

To customize the ALARMPROGRAM scripts:

Change the value of ADMINMAIL to the email address of the database server administrator.
Change the value of PAGERMAIL to the pager service email address.
Set the value of the parameter MAILUTILITY.
- UNIX™: /usr/bin/mail
- Windows™: $INFORMIXDIR/bin/ntmail.exe
- Linux™: /usr/lib/sendmail -t
To automatically back up logical logs as they fill, change BACKUP to yes.
To stop automatic log backups, change BACKUP to any value other than yes.
In the ONCONFIG file, set ALARMPROGRAM to the full pathname of alarmprogram.[sh|bat].
Restart the database server.

Results

Alarms with a severity of 1 or 2 do not write any messages to the message log nor send email. Alarms with severity of 3 or greater send email to the database administrator. Alarms with severity of 4 and 5 also notify a pager via email.