Starting the InformixHQ Server

This topic provides a brief tutorial to help you get started with InformixHQ Server.

Locate the informixhq-server.jar and the server.log4j.xml file in the $INFORMIXDIR/hq directory of your Informix database server installation.
Create an InformixHQ Server Configuration file. You can refer to the $INFORMIXDIR/hq/informixhq-server-example.properties file as an example.
The InformixHQ server configuration file must contain an initialAdminPassword . All other configuration properties are optional.
Sample configuration file
```
# required initial password for the admin user
initialAdminPassword=myPassword123
# optionally, uncomment these properties to have InformixHQ encrypt its internal H2
database
#h2.encrypt.enable=true
#h2.encrypt.password=password
```
Note: The initialAdminPassword property is only required the very first time you start the InformixHQ server, when it performs its start-up initialization and creates the first user named admin. Afterwards, you can remove the initialAdminPassword property from the informixhq-server.properties file.

Note: Password must be at least 8 characters and must contain at least one lowercase character, one uppercase character, and one number.
Optionally, edit the server.log4j.xml file to configure logging in the InformixHQ.
Note: By default InformixHQ runs on 8080 port. For more information, see InformixHQ Server Configuration.
Start the InformixHQ server using the following command:
```
java -jar informixhq-server.jar informixhq-server.properties &
```
where informixhq-server.properties is the name of the InformixHQ server configuration file.
Note: Staring from 14.10.xC4 onwards, you can start the server using an alternate method. For more information on this, see Starting the InformixHQ Server and the Agent on Windows and Starting the InformixHQ Server and the Agent on Linux.
Sample output after starting the InformixHQ server with server.log4j.xml:

Sample output after starting the InformixHQ server without server.log4j.xml:

When the InformixHQ server is started for the first time, a user with system administrator privileges for InformixHQ is created with the username admin and the password as specified in the initialAdminPassword property from your configuration file.
Using a web browser, go to the InformixHQ UI at http://localhost:8080/ and login with the user admin and the password specified in your configuration file.
Once logged in, click Add Server to add an Informix server that you want to monitor.