4. 4
Christoph Adler
Technical Account Manager – panagenda
IBM (Lotus) Notes / Domino since 2001
Consulting for projects
Administration
Migration / Consolidation
Client Management
Application Management
Since 2012 TAM at panagenda with core
competence in
Notes Client Management (incl. Upgrades)
ICS Infrastructure Analysis and Optimizations
IBM Cloud onboarding
Good to know…
Frequent traveler
Projects with many different companies in
different countries
6. 6
What can you expect from this session?
Best Practices at assessing an infrastructure
Giving an overview, with detailed information on a few focus topics
• Focus topics will include hands-on best practices
Demo is based on prepared visualizations
• IBM has two offerings: IBM Domino DoubleCheck and ISSC HealthCheck
Even if you are not faced with one of our scenarios just yet,
awareness will help you with the challenges you might be confronted with
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“In Cloud We Trust” … seriously?
XPages
HTML 5
WebSphere
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Stakeholders, Goals and Frustration
Identifying and understanding your stakeholders
Motivators of your stakeholders (Management / Governance, Technical, Business)
Different angles and responsibilities breed different views
Clarifying goals is essential for all parties involved
Why you do it has a big influence on setting your goal
Having a clear goal will allow you to measure success
Minimize frustration by providing the best possible information
Don’t be afraid to ask questions and challenge “bold claims”
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What Domino Administrators Have to Cope With
Servers
Database
sClients
Hardware (CPU, Memory), Data
storage
Network connection, Configuration,
Databases, Tasks, Mail traffic, ...
ODS, Size, Reader fields,
Deployment
Design, Number & size of
documents,
Security, Performance, …
Hardware, Data storage,
Network Connection,
Deployment Integrity,
Configuration, Security
Across the board
Geographical Distribution
Connectivity (Bandwidth,
Structure)
Online/Offline Access
Clustering/Load balancing
Distributed Responsibilities
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Key Factors: The Platform
Network / Bandwidth
Service Availability vs. Quality of Service
Hardware Considerations
Pick the platform according to the staff you (want to) have
SAN and Storage often no more then adjacent domains
Virtualization in general
Pick the platform according to the staff you (want to) have
Tons of performance improvements with Domino since 8.5.x
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Key Factors: The Platform
Network / Bandwidth
Service Availability vs. Quality of Service
Hardware Considerations
Pick the platform according to the staff you (want to) have
SAN and Storage often no more then adjacent domains
Virtualization in general
Pick the platform according to the staff you (want to) have
Tons of performance improvements with Domino since 8.5.x
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Key Factors: The Application Landscape
Application type / design suggests transformation goal
Possible destinations: Web application (e.g. XPages), mobile app, Notes browser plugin
Dependencies: hard coded links to the current infrastructure (Mail, DLL, Fax, names, etc.)
Transformation potential
Domino mass mail converts to Connections community
Read-only databases converts to web page
Focus Topics
Client landscape: determining, assessing and optimizing according to current and future state
Infrastructure utilization: understanding who uses what and how is understanding cost
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Key Factors: From Micro to Meta
Security / Compliance check in the existing infrastructure
ID Policies, Access Rights, NAB Cleanup
Deployment Integrity
Duplicate replicas, template inheritance, external applications
Infrastructure usage broken down to organization / location
Who owns an application / process?
Pick the right application to start your transformation
Location awareness prevents guesswork when it comes to network planning
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User Activity Analysis: Why is it important?
Actionable Items / Project Support
High impact users and databases / unused databases
Calculate resource requirements
Verifying and justifying licensing cost
Strategic Insight
HR data integration (cross referencing departments and locations)
Differentiating between mail, business applications and 3rd party system tools
Transformation potential (differentiate complexity based on usage patterns)
Historic view and trends allow better decision making
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User Activity: How to get the data manually
DB Activity: LOG.NSF – documents with form type “Activity”
View selection formula: SELECT FORM = "Activity"
Add columns that are interesting in your scenario
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User Activity: How to get the data manually (cont.)
DB Activity: LOG.NSF – database activity details
Note there is a 1400 activity entry maximum per database (FIFO)
There is also a 64K size limit for the user activity
More details in IBM Technote #1086245
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User Activity: How to get the data manually (cont.)
DB Activity: CATALOG.NSF
related information, but different focus
Full text index details
Replication information
ACL overview
Note: Domino does not distinguish
between user, server or maintenance
tasks activity at this level
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Client Landscape Optimization: Client Types
Give users the clients they need to be successful in their job
Notes client
Notes Browser Plug-in
Citrix client
Web browser
Mobile Device
Choose clients depending on …
complexity and variety of applications
network demand generated by particular users
the need for online / offline capabilities
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Client Landscape Optimization: Security & Compliance
Consolidating is the first step towards transformation
Client side conditions that break integrity / security
Local replicas of databases which aren’t accessible on the server side anymore
Local replicas beyond cut-off date which would re-create already deleted documents
Local replicas with identical replica IDs
ID files of several users on one client
Signature IDs with too many rights in client ECLs
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Client Landscape Optimization: Notes ODS
ODS = On Disk Structure
ODS 16 = Notes 2
ODS 17 = Notes 3
ODS 20 = Notes 4 (or templates)
ODS 41 = Notes 5
ODS 43 = Notes 6 & 7
ODS 48 = Notes 8
ODS 51 = Notes 8.5/9.0
ODS 52 = Notes >= 9.0.1
The difference between ODS 43 and 52 = up to 80% LESS FILE I/O; average 50% less.
Also helps with slow local fixed disks, not just SAN/NAS! – Think servers, too!
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Client Landscape Optimization: Notes ODS (cont.)
Fortunately, since Notes 8.5.2 you can use
NSF_UpdateODS=1 + CREATE_RX_DATABASES=1 (add Notes release for X, e.g. 9 or 85)
This will do a one-time upgrade of all local databases in the background
Use with extreme care if your data directories are on a network drive! ( Load balance)
Note that end users cannot access databases during compact (mail file replicas)
Note that names.nsf and bookmark.nsf are upgraded at next client startup ( Splash screen)
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Client Landscape Optimization: Multiuser
Since version 6.5, Notes has two install modes, Single User and Multiuser
Multiuser is highly recommended to be used for a standard user install!
Multiuser comes with a shared data directory referenced in the stub notes.ini file
The shared data directory is the single storage folder for templates out of which a new Notes data
directory is created for every user logging on to this machine
Example location of the shared data directory on Windows 7/8 (Notes 9.x)
C:ProgramDataIBMNotesDataShared
However, if custom files are copied into the ‘Shared‘ directory, they‘re NOT taken over into the
user‘s personal Notes
data folder upon creation! Wouldn‘t this be nice?
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Client Landscape Optimization: Multiuser (cont.)
There‘s a great built-in feature to an IBM Notes Multiuser install to copy over custom files
into the user‘s personal data folder upon Notes startup
Create a directory named ‘Common‘ at the same level as the Shared Data directory lives
Example on Windows 7/8 (Shared Data directory)
C:ProgramDataIBMNotesDataShared
Example on Windows 7/8 (Common directory)
C:ProgramDataIBMNotesDataCommon
All files and folders placed into ‘Common‘ are copied into the user‘s personal Data directory
upon Notes startup –
if they don‘t exist there yet!
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Client Landscape Optimization: Multiuser (cont.)
A user‘s Notes Data directory doesn‘t need to be kept on disk after logoff
Administrators can wipe all personal data folders daily from Citrix / WTS (servers) or VDI
(clients)
Use IBM or third-party roaming to build a user‘s personal data directory from scratch
Re-creating a user‘s Data directory every day during Notes startup also reduces help-desk calls
regarding corrupt local databases/files dramatically
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Client Landscape Optimization: Multiuser (cont.)
Most of the time consumed during the first startup of a Notes Standard client relates to
building the Workspace directory!
Remember to configure anti-virus scanners properly (exclude folders)
Use the ‘Common‘ directory method to deploy a prepared workspace directory into a user‘s
Notes data directory which reduces initial Notes startup time by up to 65%!
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Client Landscape Optimization: Multiuser (cont.)
Example: Configuration of an IBM Notes 9.0.1 FP3 Client
1. With a non-admin user (OS + Notes) run an initial setup of the Notes client.
2. Start the Notes client 3 times then wait for 2-3minutes each
3. Shutdown the Notes client
4. Create the following directory c:ProgramDataIBMNotesDataCommon
5. Copy the workspace directory from %LocalAppData%IBMNotesData to
c:ProgramDataIBMNotesDataCommon
6. Delete the following files/directories out of c:ProgramDataIBMNotesDataCommonworkspace
a) UDM
b) Logs all but .prov2install
c) cache if available
d) .metadata.pluginscom.ibm.collaboration.*
e) .metadata.pluginscom.ibm.rcp.personality.framework
f) .metadata.pluginscom.ibm.rcp.security.auth
g) .configorg.eclipse.osgi*.jvm_G11
7. Change jvm.shareclasses.loc= in c:Program Files (x86)IBMNotesframeworkrcpdeployjvm.propertiesh
to ‘c:/temp/xpdplat‘
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Summary & Recommendations
With so many choices of technologies, picking the right one isn’t easy
Assessing your current infrastructure is vital
Think about what goals should be achieved
Only make decisions based on facts in your environment
Consolidations and optimizations are often way more rational than a platform change
Links to sources about topics mentioned in this presentation:
http://slideshare.net/panagenda/a-performance-boost-for-your-ibm-notes-client
http://slideshare.net/panagenda/panagenda-idna-ibm-collaboration-the-future-is-now