Video: How to install infx

A short video demonstration of how to install infx. Less than four minutes and you are done, quicker still if you don't keep stopping to explain it.

File systems for Informix

When you are setting up an Informix instance you have two options for storing your data. One is to use chunk files, stored in file systems. The other is to access devices directly as raw chunks. This makes a difference to how you allocate the storage. It does not change the way you create and access databases, or the SQL and other commands used.

This post will concentrate on settings and options to use on file systems for chunk files. Other posts will cover using raw devices, RAID and SAN settings etc.

Basic Informix instance customization

When installing and setting up infx, you may want to customize the Informix environment.

The infx discovery service automatically detects instances and sets their basic Informix connection parameters e.g. INFORMIXDIR, INFORMIXSERVER, and ONCONFIG. You may also need to specify a DBDATE parameter, or other environment variable such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

It is important to make these settings before starting an instance with the infx utilities. These variables will be set before start up, as well as when executing the infx services.

infx uses a multi level approach that allows you to apply settings to just one specific instance, or to all instances.

Installing informix software with infx

When installing Informix, consider installing to a version specific location, instead of accepting the default.

This will allow you to install multiple versions, and switch between them as needed.

For example, to install and test a new version, while the existing version continues to run.

Use the infx idsinstall command to automatically install Informix software to a version specific location.

Automatic Informix instance discovery and set up

After you install infx, you run the discovery service to locate existing Informix instances. This automatically configures infx to access and manage them.

The infx disco command locates instances in the output of onstat -g dis, reads their ONCONFIG files, and creates the required files and directories.

This all happens automatically in the background, the purpose of this post is to go through each of those steps in more detail.

Installing infx

Just a short note about installing infx.

The infx package file e.g. infx-v1.2b.tar.gz, is a tar archive file.

You cannot gunzip it, use tar to extract the contents directly from the archive instead.

i.e. tar xvf infx-v1.2b.tar.gz

Sorry about any confusion.

Thanks,

Jason

How to use the infx profile dashboard to get detailed database stats

A short demonstration of how to get detailed table and index information using the infx table profiler. Includes statistics on sizing, locking and access for each table and index.

Comparing the Infx Management Suite and Open Admin Tool

I have just completed an overview that highlights the differences between infx and the Open Admin Tool. It helps explain what infx does and why you might need it!

You can read it here: Comparing infx and OAT

Feature comparison: infx and OAT feature list

Feel free to post questions in the comments or email me directly for more info. In the near future I hoping to announce the beta version...

infx and onstat testing

I have been independently developing the infx management suite and the testing has gotten to the point where I need some help.

Specifically, what I need is test data, output from Informix onstat commands, message logs and onconfig files.

I am hoping there are people out there who can run some commands on their system, and then send me the output.

How to: Informix onbar backups from the infx instance dashboard

This video shows you how to run Informix onbar backups using the infx instance dashboard.

How to: Informix ontape restore using the infx instance dashboard

In this video demonstration see how to run ontape restores using the infx instance dashboard.

How to: Informix ontape backups from the infx instance dashboard

This video shows you how to run Informix ontape backups using the infx instance dashboard.

Introduction to the infx management suite

An introduction and demonstration of the infx management suite, the next generation tool for managing Informix databases.

How to: Quickly access Informix onstat and onconfig information

Do you frequently find yourself needing quick access to simple information about your Informix instance? Info such as onconfig variables or other parameters?

While you can create templates with infx to specify the information you need, that is overkill when you just want to know something simple, such as the instance server number.

To fill this need, the infx status service has a simple interface that allows ad hoc access to the full details of the onstat parser library.

Lets take the instance server number as an example:

demo1@bobii:/home/informix>infx status vars=onconfig_servernum
23

How to: Informix HDR using infx services

While infx itself does not contain any services for Informix database replication, it can still be used to simplify the process.

The Informix High Availability Data Replication (HDR), is used to replicate all the databases in an Informix instance to another host. Informix Enterprise Replication (ER) is used to replicate individual databases and tables.

In this example I will show how to setup Informix HDR with infx services. The example assumes that Informix and infx are already installed on both servers.

The basic process is:

1. create a new instance on the second server
2. modify it to be a secondary instance
3. copy the primary instance data with the hot copy service
4. start HDR on the secondary
5. start HDR on the primary

Inside infx: How the onstat parser works

The majority of information you see from infx has come from the output of the Informix onstat command. Only a small percentage (at this time anyway) comes from the sysmaster database.

There are two reasons for that:

1. onstat is available even when sysmaster isn't
2. onstat outputs loads of information and it's very fast