Presentation given at Admin 2013 about how to plan a migration to the cloud, mobile devices, server consolidations etc. Focus is on the whealth of data that exists but that most Admins are not aware exists. This session explains why you should care and how to turn that data into decision making material.
2. What We’ll Cover …
• Introduction
• Infrastructure/IBM Connections
• Regulation/Security
• Cloud/Preparing your Migration
• Wrap-up
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3. Introduction
• Francie Tanner, Technical Director, Americas
Over 15 years experience in IBM Notes and
Domino consulting
Managing, architecting, and supporting
10-100,000 user environments
Experienced instructor and speaker
Is from Switzerland, lives in the Caribbean
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4. Introduction (cont.)
• Regardless if you’re thinking about going to the cloud,
Connections, consolidating, or growing your environment:
Crucial data lives in various places in your IT infrastructure
Doing any of the above projects requires you to look at this
data in a “big picture” view
• The challenge: How do you connect the various information silos?
Knowledge is spread out in the environment in numerous
repositories on several servers
In many situations, companies aren’t even aware of the
information available to them
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5. Introduction (cont.)
• Scope and theme of this session
There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution to this
problem
But we can show you where and how to look to make sense of
your connected environment
You don’t necessarily need a third-party product or vendor to
help you
If you haven’t noticed by now, this isn’t a technical integration
session
Three customer scenarios are covered where we’ve helped
cope with these types of issues
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6. What We’ll Cover …
• Introduction
• Infrastructure/IBM Connections
• Regulation/Security
• Cloud/Preparing your Migration
• Wrap-up
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7. Infrastructure/IBM Connections
• Leveraging the full potential of IBM Connections can have a
significant impact on your IT environment
Connecting end-user knowledge to projects and communities
Providing wikis or Knowledge Bases
File repositories to store data outside of email
Discussion boards, forums, blogs
• Your reason to deploy Connections depends on your IT strategy
What you want to measure/know more about, hence, depends
on that, too
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8. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• Important not only in this example: Know your baseline!
What amount of _____ (fill in the blank focus area) are you
doing today?
• Server metrics and statistics help you gain transparency
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9. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• How do you plan a Connections implementation and introduce it
to employees?
Who gets access?
Who is my pilot group?
Which mail servers/regions/organization levels?
How do you communicate your goal to employees?
Do organizational policies have to be created by management?
Files larger than __ have to live in Connections
All communication around a certain project lives in
Connections
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10. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• Customer example: “What effects will Connections have on my
Domino mailing infrastructure?”
Primary goal: Reducing the Domino mail volume
Primary goal: Reducing the number of large attachments in
Domino databases
Secondary goal: Gain better server performance with less
traffic, which in turn leads to server consolidation potential
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11. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• Customer example: Messaging baseline and impact
Domino Statistics (gathered via STATREP.NSF)
Mail.TotalRouted (Mail.Delivered/Mail.Transferred)
Mail.DeliveredSize.* (Mail.TransferredSize.*)
File Export Comma Separated Value
Combine results of multiple servers in spreadsheet calculation
software
• See Andy Pedisich’s blog at www.andypedisich.com on how to
process cumulative statistics in spreadsheet calculation
programs 10
12. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• Customer example: IBM Connections metrics
Connections Files Servermetrics (gathered via Web browser)
URL: https://your.connections.server/files/app#/statistics
File sharing details/user activity
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13. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• Summary: What information do we understand better now?
Our Domino mail volume in general and attachment size
distribution
Information on how many users use the Files application
Data on the files being attached
Over time, effectiveness of the Connections implementation
• Connecting the above dots tells you if and how the goals are
being achieved
Continuous analysis is needed here
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14. Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)
• Bonus tip: other Connections server metrics exist
Only basic information is provided, IBM Cognos is not required
Activity Stats:
https://your.connections.server/activities/service/html/serverme
trics
Community Stats:
https://your.connections.server/communities/service/html/serve
rmetrics
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15. What We’ll Cover …
• Introduction
• Infrastructure/IBM Connections
• Regulation/Security
• Cloud/Preparing your Migration
• Wrap-up
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16. Regulation/Security
• Fact: The way we collaborate is constantly evolving
New collaboration solutions come and go
Chat and VOIP solutions are adopted and decommissioned
Remember the 360 degree turn of ICQ?
Mobile device access is relatively new and “addictive”
This means constantly evolving security, standardization,
and integration challenges
Company mergers and migrations sometimes force change
Labor laws and regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC, and
HIPAA, apply
Think electronic information retention
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17. Regulation/Security (cont.)
• Let’s look at one of these unusual and interesting examples
now ...
• Customer Example: Volkswagen decided to turn off BlackBerry
email forwarding outside working hours
• Customer Example: Atos announced an intended ban of internal
emails in 2014
• Social responsibility pressure is building, particularly among
large European companies because of the above
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18. Regulation/Security (cont.)
• Former “nice to have“ technical information suddenly has
management attention
Such as mail volume forwarded to BlackBerry devices during
non-business hours
Such as total amount of email processed per month
Such as alternative collaboration methods to be implemented
and measured
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19. Regulation/Security (cont.)
• Basic questions:
How many emails are sent through our messaging
environment?
How many of those are sent to or from mobile devices?
• Knowledge Repositories
Domino Statistics (gathered via STATREP
.NSF as before)
Mail.Delivered
Mail.Transferred
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21. Regulation/Security (cont.)
• Advanced questions:
Group information per weekday, rather than on a simple time
axis
Group information per work shift within a weekday
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22. Regulation/Security (cont.)
• Information Ninja-level questions:
Break down the information to identify region, location, and
department volume
Connecting messaging information with HR data helps
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23. Regulation/Security (cont.)
• Customer gained transparency on:
What the actual collaboration usage patterns are
What measures are reasonable to enforce in their situation
• Customer approach as a result:
Organizational policy that discourages outside work hour
mobile device email activity
Continuously checking mail volume to verify policy compliance
• Options down the line:
Analysis broken down to locations and departments enables
pin-point measures
If continuous compliance measurements aren’t satisfactory,
service restrictions may need to be implemented
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24. What We’ll Cover …
• Introduction
• Infrastructure/IBM Connections
• Regulation/Security
• Cloud/Preparing your Migration
• Wrap-up
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25. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration
• Core question in every migration – what do you have to migrate?
We’re assuming you’ve answered the “why” at this point
• Migration destinations: XPages, Notes Web Plugin, LotusLive,
Traveler, something else, etc.
• Knowing your environment is a basic requirement
Database activity and resource usage
User behavior and activity patterns
• The data you need is already in your LOG.NSF (and
CATALOG.NSF), we simply need to turn it into useful information
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26. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• DB Activity: LOG.NSF – documents with form type “Activity”
Answers baseline questions around what is used, not used,
size
View selection formula: SELECT FORM = "Activity"
Add columns that are interesting in your scenario
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27. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• DB Activity: LOG.NSF – database activity details
Note there is a 1,400 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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28. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• DB Activity: CATALOG.NSF
Related information, but different focus
Full text index details
Replication information
ACL overview
Note: maintenance tasks ...
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29. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• When is user activity a topic?
Can be important when consolidation is a part of the migration
DB activity summaries are limited by technical restrictions, raw
user data not so much
When differentiating between server and user activity
• Why are usage patterns important?
Learning how users use Notes or other software
Such as before migrating to XPages, Notes browser plugin
Identifying “abnormal” access
Terminated users still accessing systems, huge amounts of
data transfer, etc.
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30. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• How can we extract that kind of data?
Simple user activity via view in your log.nsf, export to CSV
Session activity/usage patterns via script or third-party tools
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31. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• User Activity: LOG.NSF – basic information is easy to extract
File Export Comma Separated Value
Combine results of multiple servers in spreadsheet calculation
software
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32. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• Summary: What kind of questions can we now answer?
Which databases are used/unused?
What kind of traffic do we see on different servers?
What is the proportion between storage requirement and
activity?
Which users generate which amount of server traffic?
Where are the users geographically in relation to the
information?
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33. Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)
• All this can tell you ... and more
How much space is needed in the new cloud solution
Which databases or servers can be decommissioned
Which databases should move closer to users
How much traffic is expected in the new cloud solution
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34. What We’ll Cover …
• Introduction
• Infrastructure/IBM Connections
• Regulation/Security
• Cloud/Preparing your Migration
• Wrap-up
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35. 7 Key Points to Take Home
1. Useful information lives everywhere, existing and custom views in
IBM Domino, Connections, Traveler, and other logs, catalogs
2. Exporting data and making it user friendly goes a long way
You may already have the answers to questions, but don’t know
where to look
3. Combining different data sources in spreadsheet format paints a
connected “big picture”
4. Be sure to check out those Connections and Traveler URLs
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36. 7 Key Points to Take Home (cont.)
5. You can’t truly migrate, expand, consolidate without knowing your
baseline
6. Even though we don’t go into day-to-day monitoring and statistics
in here, it’s crucial; learn more about this
7. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone, as each project
is different
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37. Your Turn!
How to contact me:
Francie Tanner
Francie.tanner@panagenda.com
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