The Multi Node Active Cluster for High Availability technology has been introduced in IDS 11 and further enhanced in IDS 11.5. There are already some articles written about this theme that provide a good overview about the concept and technology:

• IBM Database Magazine - Lester Knutsen- Inside Informix IDS V11.5
• IBM Database Magazine - Carlton Doe - IDS 11.5 Boosts Informix's "Always On" Reputation
• DBTA Magazine - Eric Herber - Inside Informix V11.5
• IBM developerWorks - Replication technologies in IDS
• The Informix Zone - MACH 11 - Tell more more about it

Reading those articles will give you a good overview about MACH 11. The focus of the IDS Wiki is to provide you some step-by-step instructions for creating a complete MACH 11 cluster.

We will create a complete IDS MACH 11 cluster in several steps:

1. Configuring own IDS instance: penguin
2. Adding a Shared Disk Secondary (SDS) node: penguin_sds1
3. Adding a High Availability Data Replication (HDR) node: penguin_hdr
4. Adding a Remote Standalone Secondary (RSS) node: penguin_rss1
5. Adding a Enterprise Replication (ER) node: penguin_er
6. Clustering the nodes thru a Connection Manager (CM) instance: penguin_cm
7. Adding a Continuous Log Restore (CLR) instance: penguin_clr

The examples assume that all the above IDS nodes will be installed on separate hosts:

• Instance penguin, Host apollo
• Instance penguin_sds1, Host apollo_sds1
• Instance penguin_hdr, Host apollo_hdr
• Instance penguin_rss1, Host apollo_rss1
• Instance penguin_er, Host apollo_er
• Instance penguin_cm, Host apollo_cm
• Instance penguin_clr, Host apollo_clr

You may take a look at the following virtualization software in order to operate different virtual hosts on a single physical machine:

• VMware
• Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM)
  • KVM and IDS
• XEN Hypervisor
  • XEN and IDS