2015 03-30 engage-infrastructure-assessment

1. ICS Infrastructure Assessment - Analyze, Visualize
and Optimize
• engage - March 2015

2. ICS Infrastructure Assessment - Analyze, Visualize
and Optimize
engage - March 2015

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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
 ICS Infrastructure Analysis and Optimizations
Good to know…
 Frequent traveler
 Projects with many different companies in
different countries
 Beer or Wine? Beer!

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Getting started

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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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Traditional approach
The classic: Upgrade projects take 12 to 18 months to reach the target ...
Project
stable stablechange

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Agile solution approach
In many smaller, constant and always current steps forward.
Continuous change

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Agile solution approach
Agility equals success and segmentation is the key
Continuous change

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Agile solution approach
Let’s not forget interactions and interfaces!
Continuous change

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Infrastructure Assessment
Key Factors & Best Practices

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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: Network / Bandwidth

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Key Factors: Network / Bandwidth
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On Premises

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Key Factors: Network / Bandwidth
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Off Premises

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Key Factors: Network / Bandwidth

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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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Focus Topic
User Activity Analysis

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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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User Activity Analysis: Example Visualizations

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User Activity Analysis: Example Visualizations (cont.)

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User Activity Analysis: Example Visualizations (cont.)

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User Activity Analysis: Example Visualizations (cont.)

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User Activity Analysis: Example Visualizations (cont.)

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Focus Topic
Client Landscape Optimization

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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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Summary
More information = Smarter
Decisions

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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

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panagenda iDNA helps!

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panagenda iDNA helps!
• Optimize operations, planning and strategy
• Measure actual usage and load, real-world billing
• Make informed decisions for cloud, modernization,
mobile, migration and consolidation
• Identify most and least used applications, e.g. by
VIPs,
sales, the business, certain geographies, client
types
• Across IBM Notes rich clients, browser clients,
mobile devices, servers and applications
" With panagenda iDNA we
are able to get the appropriate
information, at any time for our
optimization and modernization
projects while going beyond to
answering many other
questions about our IT."
iDNA Platforms:
VMWare image for Business Intelligence across IBM
Connections,
IBM Domino, IBM Sametime, IBM Traveler, IBM WebSphere, Web
Servers, Microsoft Servers, Blackberry Enterprise Server and
many more

47. Q & A

48. Thank you !

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Christoph Adler
Technical Account Manager
panagenda GmbH – Solutions for Infrastructure Analysis and Optimization
● Donnersbergstr. 1 ● 64646 Heppenheim (Germany)
● Cell: +49 172 494 4141
● Phone: +49 6252 679 39-52 ● Fax: +49 6252 679 39-16
● E-Mail: christoph.adler@panagenda.com
Kontakt