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Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
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.
Setting up and managing Enterprise Replication
After you design your replication system, you define it and start replication.
Grid setup and management
A grid is a set of replication servers that are configured to simplify administration. When you run SQL data definition statements from within a grid context on a grid server, the statements propagate to all servers in the grid. You can run SQL data manipulation statements and routines through grid routines. You can choose to set up replication automatically when you create a table through a grid. You can propagate external files to other servers in the grid.
Creating a grid
You can create a grid based on an existing replication domain. You must authorize users who can run grid routines, and designate a server from which to run grid routines.

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.
- 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.
  - About Enterprise Replication
    Informix® Enterprise Replication generates and manages multiple copies of data at one or more sites, which allows an enterprise to share corporate data throughout its organization.
  - Planning and designing for Enterprise Replication
    Before you set up your replication system, plan how to include Enterprise Replication into your database server environment, design your database schema by following Enterprise Replication requirements, and then design your replication system between database servers.
  - Setting up and managing Enterprise Replication
    After you design your replication system, you define it and start replication.
    - Preparing the Replication Environment
      The following topics explain the steps that are required for setting up Enterprise Replication.
    - Using High-Availability Clusters with Enterprise Replication
    - Defining Replication Servers, Replicates, Participants, and Replicate Sets
      These topics describe the steps defining and starting Enterprise Replication.
    - Grid setup and management
      A grid is a set of replication servers that are configured to simplify administration. When you run SQL data definition statements from within a grid context on a grid server, the statements propagate to all servers in the grid. You can run SQL data manipulation statements and routines through grid routines. You can choose to set up replication automatically when you create a table through a grid. You can propagate external files to other servers in the grid.
      - Example of setting up a replication system with a grid
        This comprehensive example sets up a replication domain, creating a grid, creating a database, creating a replicated table, and loading data.
      - Example of rolling out schema changes in a grid
        You can roll out schema changes to replicated tables through a grid without shutting down your applications.
      - Creating a grid
        You can create a grid based on an existing replication domain. You must authorize users who can run grid routines, and designate a server from which to run grid routines.
      - Grid maintenance
        You can adjust grid membership, change user or server authorization to run grid routines, and delete grid-routine history from the syscdr database.
      - Adding replication servers to a grid
        There are multiple ways to add a replication server to a grid.
      - Adding an externally created replicate into a grid replicate set
        If a replicate is created external to a grid, it can still be added to a grid replicate set.
      - Creating replicated tables through a grid
        You can automatically create a replicate and start replication when you create a table through the grid.
      - Enabling replication within a grid transaction
        You can enable replication within a transaction that is run in the context of the grid.
      - Propagating updates to data
        You can change your data through a grid routine and propagate the changes to all the servers in the grid.
      - Administering servers in the grid with the SQL administration API
        You can run SQL administration API commands in grid routines to perform administrative tasks on all servers in the grid.
      - Propagating database object changes
        You can create or alter database objects by running DDL statements while connected to the grid and propagate the changes to all the servers in the grid.
      - Propagating external files through a grid
        You can copy non-database, external files to the servers within a grid.
      - Rerunning failed grid routines
        You can rerun a grid routine that failed on one or more servers in the grid.
      - Connection management for client connections to participants in a grid
        You can configure Connection Managers to route connection requests from clients to the replication servers of a grid.
      - Grid queries
        If you have a table that is the same on multiple servers in a grid, but whose data is not replicated, you can run a grid query to return the consolidated data from the multiple servers.
    - Shard cluster setup
      Sharding is a way to horizontally partition a single table across multiple database servers in a shard cluster. Enterprise Replication moves the data from the source server to the appropriate target server as specified by the sharding method. You query a sharded table as if the entire table is on the local server. You do not need to know where the data is. Queries that are performed on one shard server retrieve the relevant data from other servers in a shard cluster. Sharding reduces the index size on each shard server and distributes performance across hardware. You can add shard servers to the shard cluster as your data grows.
    - Managing Replication Servers and Replicates
    - Monitor and troubleshooting Enterprise Replication
      You can monitor and diagnose problems with the Enterprise Replication system by using several different methods, depending on your needs.
  - Push data feature
  - Loopback replication
  - Appendixes

Creating a grid

You can create a grid based on an existing replication domain. You must authorize users who can run grid routines, and designate a server from which to run grid routines.

About this task

You must be connected to a replication server in the domain that contains the servers that you want to include in the grid.

Procedure

To create a grid:

Specify a name for the grid and the servers to include in the grid by running the cdr define grid command. For example, the following command creates a grid named grid1 and adds all replication servers in the domain as members of the grid:
```
cdr define grid grid1 --all
```
Authorize users to run commands on the grid and designate a server from which grid commands can be run by running the cdr enable grid command. For example, the following command authorizes the user bill to run commands on the server gserv1:
```
cdr enable grid --grid=grid1 --user=bill --node=gserv1
```
Only authorized users can run grid routines on authorized servers. User informix does not have permission to perform grid operations unless you include it in the user list.