HELP ME WITH THE FAQ....Please review

I've just finished adding all the FAQ Updates I have and fixing my email address everywhere (thanks June Hunt!). http://smooth1.my-bulldog.com/pages/smooth1_my-bulldog_com/ifaq/informix.htm Questions 1. Can someone review "How do I setup Enterprise Replication (ER)?" http://smooth1.my-bulldog.com/pages/smooth1_my-bulldog_com/ifaq/ifaq08c.htm#8.82 2. Can someone review "How do I handle a long transaction?" http://smooth1.my-bulldog.com/pages/smooth1_my-bulldog_com/ifaq/ifaq08c.htm#8.83 I've added an onarchive way to clear the logs but I'm not sure the command is correct. NOTE: I've mentioned onarchive went in 9.30 but this may help someone so I left it in. "you will need to catalog the new tape via the CATALOG option in onarchive" I don't know what the command is for this! 3. Can someone review "How do I configure DD_HASHMAX and DD_HASHSIZE?" http://smooth1.my-bulldog.com/pages/smooth1_my-bulldog_com/ifaq/ifaq06e.htm#6.61 I am not sure what algorithm is used for the hashing and the script to calculate sizes a) might be wrong b) does not indicate which values you should use from the output of the script! 4. Can someone review "Should I use striping". a) Andrew Hamm takes a strong position! b) Maybe Andrew wants to put in an updated version? HELP!

For the most part the ER section looks fine. Some corrections.... Since 9.4, we can configure ER to use an ER only port, which can be used to override the trusted server rule just a bit. Check the PAM documentation for information on how to create an ER only port. NOOOOO Do not put the shm interface with an ER group. The purpose of a group is to identify the ports that can be considered equivalent means of getting to the system. A shared memory interface is not equivelant to a TCP interface because the TCP interface can be remote. If you are going to combine ER with HDR, then the two servers need to be part of the same group. This has an added advantage with v10 because if you put a pair of HDR servers under a single group and INFORMIXSERVER is set to the group, then we ensure that you only connect to the primary node.

For the most part the ER section looks fine. Some corrections.... Since 9.4, we can configure ER to use an ER only port, which can be used to override the trusted server rule just a bit. Check the PAM documentation for information on how to create an ER only port. NOOOOO Do not put the shm interface with an ER group. The purpose of a group is to identify the ports that can be considered equivalent means of getting to the system. A shared memory interface is not equivelant to a TCP interface because the TCP interface can be remote. If you are going to combine ER with HDR, then the two servers need to be part of the same group. This has an added advantage with v10 because if you put a pair of HDR servers under a single group and INFORMIXSERVER is set to the group, then we ensure that you only connect to the primary node.

David, I'm qute willing to help with "What exactly is a long transaction" but it needs a complete rewrite. It currently recommends using "onarchive" and I'm not sure if that is still distributed. I don't even know if informix would recommend clearing a long transaction in that way. It also doesn't take any account of newer advances with dynamic allocation of logs etc. As to your comments on LTXHWM/LTXEHWM there is no reason that I know of to set theses to anything lower than 50/60. As I understand it the setting of 60 for EHWM allows for one rollback record for each pair of insert/update records. I would also disagree strongly on the sizing of logical logs. Practical experience has shown that restores using onbar with certain backup storage managers is better with a few large logs. It seems the time taken to search tapes for each log can be prohibitive. That said it is also significant not to make logs to big from the aspect of restore point granularity, especially when using ONTAPE(no PIT restore). Generally I suspect we could write a complete Informix handbook on the configuration of logs etc for the wide variety of potential disaster recovery scenarios. And now we have Table level PIT restore. And that changes lots of things. regards Malcolm