#System Administration

InterSystems products (IRIS, Caché, Ensemble) already include a built-in Apache web server. But the built-in server is designed for the development and administration tasks and thus has certain limitations. Though you may find some useful workarounds for these limitations, the more common approach is to deploy a full-scale web server for your production environment. This article describes how to set up Apache to work with InterSystems products and how to provide HTTPS access. We will be using Ubuntu, but the configuration process is almost the same for all Linux distributions.

Windows 7 and some other Microsoft Operating Systems can shutdown too fast for large applications, such as a Cache instance with a large amount of data and changes, to close gracefully.

This is the first article in a series discussing how to regain disk space from Caché databases at the operating system level. This introductory article discusses Caché database growth and gives an overview of various methods you can use to return unused disk space that is allocated to database files back to the file system. But before we talk about returning space to the file system, let’s first review how does it get allocated in the first place.

After reading Stephen Wilson's article "Windows 7 performs shutdown too fast for Cache to close and so it gets forced down" I've recalled another solution that was based on Local Group Policy, which allows to control extra actions that should occur on computer startup or shutdown. How to add a computer shutdown script is well documented in MS Technet article.

Introduction

This is a quickstart guide to IRIS for Linux systems administrators who need to be able to support the IRIS DB as well as other normal infrastructure tasks.

IRIS is a DB system from Intersystems. An IRIS DB can hold code (in the form of a Class) or data (in the form of Globals). IRIS DB are Linux files called IRIS.DAT.

Coming back to the topic of how to minimize journals.

This is a self contained class that can be run from the Intersystems Task Scheduler which records peak usage details for databases and licenses built up throughout the day and retaining 30 days history.

To schedule the task to run every hour:

d ##class(Metrics.Task).Schedule()

You can also specify your own start time, stop time, and run interval:

d ##class(Metrics.Task).Schedule(startTime, stopTime, intervalMins)

Metrics are stored in ^Metrics in the namespace that the class resides in/is run from.

IMPORTANT NOTE InterSystems no longer provides a separate InterSystems Reports Server container. To run containerized InterSystems Reports Server, use Logi Reports Server container and your InterSystems Reports Server license. Documentation.

InterSystems Reports is powered by Logi Report (formerly named JReport), a product of Logi Analytics. InterSystems Reports is supported by InterSystems IRIS and InterSystems IRIS for Health. It provides a robust modern reporting solution that includes:

• Embedded operational reporting which can be customized by both report developers and end users.
• Pixel-perfect formatting that lets you develop highly specific form grids or other special layout elements for invoices, documents, and forms.
• Banded layouts that provide structure for aggregated and detailed data.
• Exact positioning of headers, footers, aggregations, detailed data, images, and sub-reports.
• A variety of page report types.
• Large-scale dynamic report scheduling and distribution including export to PDF, XLS, HTML, XML, and other file formats, printing, and archiving for regulatory compliance.

InterSystems Reports consists of:

• A report designer, which provides Design and Preview Tabs that enable report developers to create and preview reports with live data.
• A report server which provides end users browser-based access to run, schedule, filter, and modify reports.

From InterSystems documentation.

This article focuses on the Server part of InterSystems Reports and provides a guide on running Report Server in containers while persisting all the data.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides a feature rich environment for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) as a cloud offering fully capable of supporting all of InterSystems products including the latest InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. Care must be taken, as with any platform or deployment model, to ensure all aspects of an environment are considered such as performance, availability, operations, and management procedures. Specifics of each of those areas will be covered in this article.

Container Images

In this second post on containers fundamentals, we take a look at what container images are.

What is a container image?

A container image is merely a binary representation of a container.

A running container or simply a container is the runtime state of the related container image.

Please see the first post that explains what a container is.

Context:

mirrored configuration with one primary member and one async member (without failover/backup member)

Purpose:

replace the CACHE.DAT of a mirrored database on the primary member.

Steps to follow:

Following my previous post, some urged me to get to the point – ok, so I found my "star" journaling globals, the ones that take up the most space – but how do I avoid this? How do I minimize the journal's size?

[DISCLAIMER: Some might still be disappointed after this post as well but wait till the next one... ]

InterSystems FAQ rubric

If the journal file is too large to be searched or filtered using the Management Portal, you can refer to it using the following two methods.

① How to use the ^JRNDUMP utility
② How to reference it in a program

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InterSystems FAQ rubric

If the system does not stop for 24 hours, old journal files will be deleted at 0:30 according to the "Journal file deletion settings".

A possible cause of journal files remaining that are older than the "Journal file deletion settings" is that there are transactions that remain open.

In that case, you will be able to delete the journal file by searching for processes executing transactions and finalizing the transactions.