Online Course Setup

All of our Informix courses can be taken online from anywhere in the world. The courses are instructor-led, using our Zoom Training system with voice-over IP (VOIP) for screen sharing, presentations, and group discussions. Each student is assigned a dedicated server for remotely accessing all labs and exercises.

We use two teaching aids for remote students:

  1. Zoom for the lectures and group discussions using your web browser
  2. SSH connection to our training lab AWS Informix server using PUTTY, or any SSH client.

Course Preparation Recommendations

If you are attending the class online, we have a few recommendations:

You will need:

  1. A quiet place to attend the training with no distractions.
  2. A headphone and microphone for VOIP or a speakerphone to listen and participate in our class discussions. A good quality headset or phone will significantly enhance your participation.
  3. A web browser that supports Zoom. 
  4. An SSH client to log into our training lab servers. We recommend using PUTTY https://www.putty.org or the built-in Unix SSH client. Many students have also used MobaXterm Home Edition https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download-home-edition.html. There are a number of other SSH clients that work well.
  5. Before class, please test that your corporate firewall does not block your access to our Amazone Web Servers. You will receive an email with an AWS hostname, a login, and a password before class begins. Using connect to our training server, if you receive a login prompt, your connection worked. If you don't receive a login prompt, please check with your firewall administrator. 

Online Training System

The URL to our training system will be sent a week before the class. You will receive an invite from Zoom to the class. You can use Voice over IP (VOIP) on your computer. I

Login to Our Lab Using SSH

Logging into our training lab requires a secure shell connection using Putty or any other software that will create a secure telnet connection.  The user ID and password for the training servers will be sent to you in a separate email before the class begins.

Once logged into the training lab network, you will be redirected to your own machine for the exercises. The machines are available for you to use 24 hours a day during the days of the class.

Typical Schedule

The class runs from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time (EST). If you are attending a private class, the schedule may be adjusted to fit your time zone.

Course Material

The course presentations, documents, and lab exercises are provided in pdf format. The course material is updated continually; you will receive an email every day with the material for the day.  At the end of the class, you will receive a gzip or tar file with all the course labs so you can use them on your systems.

"I recently had the opportunity to attend (remotely via WebEx) a training course with Lester Knutsen for Informix. This was one of the best investments that we have spent on learning tips to tune and monitor a system. The course was very informative and enlightening. At first, I was skeptical of attending a training session remotely but in the long run it was definitely the best way to have been trained. We were able to immediately make checks, changes, and adjustments to our current infrastructure as the course was being taught. Thanks for all your support and help!"

~ Eric Urff, Director Information Technology, Daytona State College