CA Technologies Agent for IBM R12.5 - Manual (Page 9)

Chapter 1: Introducing the Agent for IBM
Informix
CA ARCserve Backup is a comprehensive, distributed storage solution for
applications, databases, distributed servers, and file systems. It provides
backup and restore capabilities for databases, business-critical applications,
and network clients.
The CA ARCserve Backup Agent for IBM Informix provides backup and restore
capabilities for the IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS). The types of data that
can be backed up include both critical and non-critical dbspaces (primarily
chunks, or specific regions of disk space); blobspaces (binary large object
spaces); and logical logs (transaction records).
This section contains the following topics:
How the Agent for IBM Informix Works (see page 9)
How the Agent for IBM Informix Works
The Agent for IBM Informix works with ON-Bar, which is the backup and
recovery utility for IDS. The primary job of the agent is to issue requests for
the Informix ON-Bar utility on behalf of the Informix Manager. Options set
through the Backup Manager interface are translated into the ON-Bar
command line options, to provide an integrated environment. You can also
work from the ON-Bar command line to submit jobs directly to the Backup
Manager.
The agent connects CA ARCserve Backup and IDS by communicating between
the two applications, enabling data to be passed back and forth. The agent
resides on the same system as IDS.
To backup a database, the CA ARCserve Backup Manager converts user entries
into one or more requests, and sends the requests to the agent on the IDS
system. The agent communicates this request to ON-Bar, which executes
backup and restore requests for IDS. The agent retrieves the specified data
objects from IDS and sends them to the Backup Manager, which copies the
data to your storage media.
You can manage the backup and restore operations better with the following
options.
Chapter 1: Introducing the Agent for IBM Informix 9