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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.
Defining Replication Servers, Replicates, Participants, and Replicate Sets
These topics describe the steps defining and starting Enterprise Replication.
Defining Replication Servers
You must define a replication server to create a replication domain or to add a server to an existing domain.
Creating a new domain by cloning a server
You can create a new replication domain by cloning a server and then converting the two Informix® database servers to replication servers. Use cloning and conversion if you want to set up replication based on the data on a source server that is not yet running Enterprise Replication.

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.
      - Starting Database Servers
        The database server must be online before you can define it as a replication server.
      - Defining Replication Servers
        You must define a replication server to create a replication domain or to add a server to an existing domain.
        Creating a new domain by cloning a server
        You can create a new replication domain by cloning a server and then converting the two Informix® database servers to replication servers. Use cloning and conversion if you want to set up replication based on the data on a source server that is not yet running Enterprise Replication.
        Example of creating a new replication domain by cloning
        This is an example of creating a new replication domain based on the data and configuration on a source database server that does not have replication defined. The three additional replication servers in the domain are added by cloning the source server.
        Adding a server to the domain by cloning a server
        You can add a replication server to an existing replication domain by using the ifxclone utility to clone an existing replication server onto a target database server.
        Customizing the Replication Server Definition
        You can specify replication attributes of a server when you define it.
      - Define a replicate
        To define a replicate, use the cdr define replicate command.
      - Define replicate sets
        When you define a replicate set, you specify the type of replicate set, the replicates that belong to the replicate set, and the frequency of replication for the member replicates.
      - Initially Synchronizing Data Among Database Servers
      - Set up replication through templates
        Enterprise Replication provides templates to allow easy setup and deployment of replication for clients with large numbers of tables to replicate. A template uses schema information about a database, a group of tables, columns, and replication keys to define a group of master replicates and a replicate set.
    - 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.
    - 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 new domain by cloning a server

You can create a new replication domain by cloning a server and then converting the two Informix® database servers to replication servers. Use cloning and conversion if you want to set up replication based on the data on a source server that is not yet running Enterprise Replication.

About this task

Because the source server does not have Enterprise Replication defined, you use the ifxclone utility to create a cluster containing a primary server and remote stand-alone (RS) secondary server. The conversion process converts the cluster to a pair of replication servers in a new domain.

Procedure

To create a new domain with two replication servers:

On the source server, prepare the server environment for Enterprise Replication, such as configuring sqlhosts information and setting the necessary configuration parameters.
On both servers, complete the ifxclone prerequisites for all servers, such as setting the required configuration parameters and environment variables.
On the target server, complete the ifxclone prerequisites for an RS secondary server, such as creating all of the chunks that exist on the source server. You can use the --createchunkfile option (-k) of the ifxclone utility to automatically create cooked chunks on the target server.
On the target server, run the ifxclone command with the --disposition=RSS option to clone the data and the configuration of the source server onto the target server. Do not include the --useLocal option.
On the source server, run the cdr check sec2er command to determine if conversion to replication servers is possible.
Solve any error conditions identified by the cdr check sec2er command and rerun it until its output indicates that conversion will be successful. You can also solve warning conditions.
On the source server, run the cdr start sec2er command to convert both servers to replication servers and create a new replication domain.

What to do next

To add other servers to the domain, you can clone a replication server.