An Actian Ingres instance consists of a set of installed products that share a unique system-file location, ownership, and instance name, together with any data files created by these products.

Multiple copies of Actian Ingres can be installed on a single server and run simultaneously. Each copy of Actian Ingres is referred to as an Actian Ingres instance.

An instance is classified as either a server installation or a client installation.

The default instance name is: Ingres II.