If I have understood you correctly

Can you take the source database down?

dd the chunks over the network?

Bring up 9.3 and check all ok

Do inplace upgrade to 9.4

we used to move our 600GB-800GB informix databases across machines using ISM quite often, here are few steps on how to do it, hope it helps

1) copy the ism backup directory from source to target machine
2) initialize the ism on the target machine
3) remove the default device from the target machine
4) ism data files have hostname embedded in it, you will need to run the nsradmin with -s and -i options to change it(just one command will do the trick)
5) recreate the ism catalog data using the ism_catalog -recreate_from <backup_dir_name>
6) sync the media with nsrim command
7) make device appendable using ism_op command
8) replace source instance name with target instance name in ixbar
9) copy oncfg file from source system to target system
10) start the restore

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-informix-list@iiug.org
[mailto:owner-informix-list@iiug.org]On Behalf Of malcolm weallans
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 5:23 AM
To: informix-list@iiug.org
Subject: Imported restore using ISM

For reasons that are still not exactly clear to me I
have been asked to migrate a complete IDS system from
one IDS 9.40 server to another.  I think it has
something to do with a SAGE support statement that
they don't support moving databases using
dbexport/dbimport.

Anyway, has anybody else been through the imported
restore using ISM procedure.  I feel that every page I
turn is yet another challenge.  

Firstly I have discovered that whilst it is possible
to have IDS 9.3 and IDS 9.4 on the same machine, and
it is possible to have both running at the same time,
the two versions use different versions of ISM.  And
as the current version is pointed to by a link called
/nsr it is only possible to have one version of ISM
running.

Thta was problem number ~15.  I had already
encountered the difficulties of backing up dbspaces of
more than 2Gbytes using ISM, the problem of how to tar
the output of ISM into one file for ease of transfer
across the network, and numerous other little UNIX
type quirks.

Then I discovered that if you follow the instructions
in the manual you have to be very careful about
continuation lines.  The nsradmin command on page 5-12
of the Informix Storage Manager manual for IDS 9.4 is
in fact one line.  

And then I following the instruction on page 5-13 I
worked out that I would be tryin to execute the
command

ln -s /usr/informix/informix94 /usr/informix

Which even I realised would not have the desired
effect.  

So back into UNIX admin problems.  And /usr/informix
is a mount point so I couldn't even rename it.

If I ever finish this migration please suscribe freely
to "Big Issue".  It'll probably be me begging.

regards

Malcolm

But if anybody has any bright ideas of how to migrate
IDS systems from machine  to machine b easily please
let me know.

sending to informix-list

sending to informix-list