Setup Informix 12.10 PSM for dummy

Informix IDS 12.10 has replaced ISM with PSM (Primary Storage Manager). PSM is a simple storage manager for backup/restore operation with basic features (yet to reach the enterprise backup/restore solution like Netbackup, Data Protector, TSM ..). At this moment, PSM supports only DISK (filesystem) as media.

PSM is suitable for small environment and does not have 3rd party storage manager for backup.

Please find the following steps that I setup PSM 🙂

(1) Pre-requisite:
– Use informix userid
– prepare a filesystem with adequate size to hold onbar backup files

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How to restore critical administrative files using onbar (IDS 12.10.xC2 and above) ?

I notice critical files are being backup by onbar since IDS 11.70, and I have confirmed with IBM Informix support that these files are not able to restore with IDS 11.70.

From IDS 12.10.xC2 onwards, critical files are able to be restored if previous onbar backup completed successfully.

Critical files that we mentioned:
– ONCONFIG
– SQLHOSTS
– ixbar.servernum
– oncfg_servername.servernum

To restore critical files in IDS 12.10.xC2 and above, you have 2 options:
(1) Use ‘onbar -r -cf yes’ to restore critical file during cold restore.
(2) Alternatively, you can use ‘onbar -r -cf only’ to extract critical files while Informix server is offline.

Informix Archecker – point in time restore/recover table (Scenario 1)

I would like to share this feature with all of you – Informix Archecker.
It can be used to restore/recover a missing table from backup.

Note: Informix Archecker is available since IDS 10.00 or higher.

Scenario 1:

– Someone accidentally dropped a table “state” on 2013-09-25 11:04:16.
– You will restore/recover the table “state” point-in-time until 2013-09-25 11:00:13.
– Database = stores_demo Table = state
– You are using onbar with Netbackup for backup/restore.

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