#System Administration

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.

Usually I recommend to set the global buffer (GB) as large as possible in order to maintain in memory more globals as possible. I don't know if this is a standard recommendation, but I want to discuss what should be the best buffer size for a Ensemble instance that only process messages.

While the integrity of Caché and InterSystems IRIS databases is completely protected from the consequences of system failure, physical storage devices do fail in ways that corrupt the data they store. For that reason, many sites choose to run regular database integrity checks, particularly in coordination with backups to validate that a given backup could be relied upon in a disaster.

This text is a continuation of my article where I explained the structure a Caché database. In this article, I described the types of blocks, connections between them and their relation to globals. The article was purely theoretical. I made a project that helps visualize the block tree - and this article will explain how it works in great detail.

Released with no formal announcement in IRIS preview release 2019.4 is the /api/monitor service exposing IRIS metrics in Prometheus format. Big news for anyone wanting to use IRIS metrics as part of their monitoring and alerting solution. The API is a component of the new IRIS System Alerting and Monitoring (SAM) solution that will be released in an upcoming version of IRIS.

In this series of articles, I'd like to present and discuss several possible approaches toward software development with InterSystems technologies and GitLab. I will cover such topics as:

• Git 101
• Git flow (development process)
• GitLab installation
• GitLab Workflow
• Continuous Delivery
• GitLab installation and configuration
• GitLab CI/CD

In the first article, we covered Git basics, why a high-level understanding of Git concepts is important for modern software development, and how Git can be used to develop software.

In the second article, we covered GitLab Workflow - a complete software life cycle process and Continuous Delivery.

I this article we'll discuss:

• GitLab installation and configuration
• Connecting your environments to GitLab

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.

C:\data\backup.bat :

C:\InterSystems\Ensemble\bin\cache -s"C:\InterSystems\Ensemble\Mgr" -U%%SYS ##Class(Backup.General).ExternalFreeze() <C:\data\login.scr

echo %ERRORLEVEL%

rem note that we need to check errorlevel from highest to lowest here....

if errorlevel 5 goto OK

This article was written as an attempt to share the experience of installing the InterSystems Caché DBMS for production environment.
We all know that the development configuration of a DBMS is very different from real-life conditions.
As a rule, development is carried out in “hothouse conditions” with a bare minimum of security measures, but when we publish our project online, we must ensure its reliable and uninterrupted operation in a very aggressive environment.

I am working with a client to try and export a set of tasks defined in the Task Manager from one system to another. I am not seeing any API for this. I can query this information in SQL. So I tried to use the Data Export Wizard from the System Management portal in the SQL window. Export was fine. Importing failed with a "can't insert into read only field" error. Looking at the class definition does not help since the implementation details are not visible.

So how would one accomplish this? Export scheduled tasks from one system to another?

I recently helped a site investigate a problem that appeared after they upgraded their Windows instance of Caché from 2015.1 to 2017.1. A terminal session launched from the server's desktop cube was unable to run OS-level commands using the $ZF(-1) function. For instance, using the no-op command "REM" as follows:

write $zf(-1,"rem")

was returning -1, indicating that the Windows command could not be issued.

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... ]

NB. Please be advised that PKI is not intended to produce certificates for secure production systems. You should make alternate arrangements to create certificates for your productions.
NB. PKI is deprecated as of IRIS 2024.1: documentation and announcement.

In this post, I am going to detail how to set up a mirror using SSL, including generating the certificates and keys via the Public Key Infrastructure built in to InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. I did a similar post in the past for Caché, so feel free to check that out here if you are not running InterSystems IRIS. Much like the original, the goal of this is to take you from new installations to a working mirror with SSL, including a primary, backup, and DR async member, along with a mirrored database. I will not go into security recommendations or restricting access to the files. This is meant to just simply get a mirror up and running. Example screenshots are taken on a 2018.1.1 version of IRIS, so yours may look slightly different.

I am setting up a new Caché instance and I have managed to configure it where Caché username/password is required to initiate the Caché session:

csdfalsdkfjf@fra23e234sco:/opt/labmed/test/test81/proc$ csession cache1

Node: frxxco, Instance: CACHE1

Username:

I cannot find the setting in the management console that allows for unauthenticated login to a Caché session. Any help is much appreciated.