7 Chapter 7. MACH11 clusters IBM Informix MACH11 describes a group of Informix database cluster solutions. In this configuration, a primary database server replicates all changes on the local maintained data set to a single or a number of standby database servers. The existing secondary servers can be updatable or read-only. Each solution targets a particular cluster data availability and client workload balancing goal. Because these solutions can be combined together, powerful database server environments can be created easily and are transparent in their usage. High Availability Data Replication (HDR), Remote Secondary Standby (RSS), and Shared Disk Secondary (SDS) servers are fundamental components for building virtualized cloud, cluster, or network of cluster database server environments. In this chapter, we describe these functions, starting with a general discussion. We then discuss the following topics: A general discussion about database cluster environments, targets, and infrastructure layouts General functionality provided by the standby database server Failover management Cluster monitoring facilities provided by the informix database server We provide details about the strength of each particular solution, their requirements for setup, and initialization in the chapters followed. © Copyright IBM Corp. 2011. All rights reserved. 309