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Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
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.
ON-Bar backup and restore system
Restore data with ON-Bar
You can use the ON-Bar utility to restore data that was backed up by the ON-Bar utility.
onbar -r syntax: Restoring data
To run a complete restore, use onbar -r command.
Reinitializing the database server and restoring data
Reinitializing disk space destroys all existing data managed by the database server. However, you can restore data from a backup that was performed before reinitialization.

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.
- 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.
  - Overview of backup and restore
    These topics provide an overview of backup and restore concepts. They also provide information about planning for backup and restore operations.
  - ON-Bar backup and restore system
    - Overview of the ON-Bar backup and restore system
      ON-Bar consists of various components and it works with a storage manager to back up and restore data.
    - Configure the storage manager and ON-Bar
      The topics in this section provide the information that you need to plan and to set up ON-Bar with a storage manager.
    - Back up with ON-Bar
      You can use the ON-Bar utility to back up and verify storage spaces (dbspaces, blobspaces, and sbspaces) and logical-log files.
    - Restore data with ON-Bar
      You can use the ON-Bar utility to restore data that was backed up by the ON-Bar utility.
      - Pre-restore checklist
        Use this checklist to determine if a restore is necessary and to prepare for a restore.
      - Storage device availability
        Verify that the storage devices and files used in the backup are available for the restore.
      - onbar -r syntax: Restoring data
        To run a complete restore, use onbar -r command.
        Avoid salvaging logical logs
        The onbar -r command automatically salvages the logical logs. However, avoid salvaging logical logs in some situations.
        Performing a cold restore
        If a critical storage space is damaged because of a disk failure or corrupted data, you must perform a cold restore. If a disk fails, you need to replace it before you can perform a cold restore to recover data.
        Configuring a continuous log restore by using ON-Bar
        Use continuous log restore to keep a second system (hot backup) available to replace the primary system if the primary system fails.
        Restoring data by using a mixed restore
        You can use mixed restore to reduce the time until urgent data becomes online and available when you need to restore the server. Urgent data is data that you deem as critical to your business operation.
        Recreating chunk files during a restore
        If the disk or file system fails, one or more chunk files might be missing from the dbspace. Use the -O option to recreate missing chunk files and any necessary directories during a restore.
        Reinitializing the database server and restoring data
        Reinitializing disk space destroys all existing data managed by the database server. However, you can restore data from a backup that was performed before reinitialization.
      - Replacing disks during a restore
        You can replace disks during a restore by renaming chunks. You rename chunks by specifying new chunks paths and offsets during a cold restore with ON-Bar. This option is useful if you need to restore storage spaces to a different disk from the one on which the backup was made. You can rename any type of chunk, including critical chunks and mirror chunks.
      - Restoring to a different computer
        You can back up data on one computer and restore the data on a different computer. Importing a restore is useful for disaster recovery or upgrading a database server. After you back up your data and move over the storage-manager objects, you can perform an imported restore. An imported restore involves copying files from the source to the target computer and performing the restore in one of several ways.
      - onbar -RESTART syntax: Restarting a failed restore
        If a failure occurs with the database server, media, storage manager, or ON-Bar during a restore, you can restart the restore from the place that it failed. To restart a failed restore, the RESTARTABLE_RESTORE configuration parameter must be set to ON in the onconfig file when the restore fails.
      - Resolve a failed restore
        How you resolve a failed restore depends on the cause of the failure.
    - External backup and restore
    - Customize and maintain ON-Bar
    - ON-Bar catalog tables
      These topics describe the ON-Bar tables that are stored in the sysutils database.
    - ON-Bar messages and return codes
      ON-Bar prints informational, progress, warning, and error messages to the ON-Bar activity log file. ON-Bar return codes indicate the status of the command.
  - ontape backup and restore system
  - Backup and restore a Remote Secondary Server(RSS)
  - Integrated Backup Encryption
    These topics provide information about Integrated Backup Encryption.
  - Informix® Primary Storage Manager
    The Informix® Primary Storage Manager manages storage for ON-Bar backup and restore operations, including parallel backups, that use file devices (disks).
  - archecker table level restore utility
  - Backup and restore configuration parameter reference
  - Cloud Backup
    These topics provide information about storing and retrieving the backups directly to the ecosystem of selected cloud providers, namely Amazon S3 and Softlayer Object Storage.
  - Appendixes
- 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.

Reinitializing the database server and restoring data

Reinitializing disk space destroys all existing data managed by the database server. However, you can restore data from a backup that was performed before reinitialization.

Before you begin

You must have a current, level-0 backup of all storage spaces.

About this task

During initialization, ON-Bar saves the emergency boot file elsewhere and starts a new, empty emergency boot file. Therefore, any backups that you performed before reinitializing the database server are not recognized. You must use the copy of the emergency boot file you saved before initialization to restore the previous database server instance.

Procedure

To reinitialize the database server and restore the old data:

Copy the emergency boot file, the oncfg file, and the onconfig file to a different directory.
Set the FULL_DISK_INIT configuration parameter to 1 in the onconfig file.
Shut down the database server.
Reinitialize the database server by running the oninit -i command.
Move the administrative files into the database server directory.
If the administrative files are unavailable, copy them from the last backup into the database server directory.
Perform a restore by running the onbar -r -p -w command.
Do not salvage the logical logs.
Verify that you restored the correct instance of the critical and noncritical storage spaces.