Best Practices for Deploying IBM Lotus Notes® and Domino® 8

Notes 8 Upgrade Workshop, June 2008

Pete Hampton
Technical Specialist
Lotus Software, IBM UKISA

®
 Table of Contents
 Before You Begin
 Best Practices Upgrading to Release 8
Small & Medium Businesses
Enterprise
 Best Practices Upgrading to ODS48
 Release 8 Deployment Experiences
 Q&A
 Before You Begin
 What's New in Lotus Notes 8 Client?
 Lotus Notes & Domino 8 Technical Requirements
 Supported Configurations for Notes & Domino 8
 Release 8 Readiness
Lotus Notes Companion Products
3rd Party Products
 Other Considerations
 What's New in Lotus Notes 8 client?
 User interface changes, new features and many other
additional references

 Presentation - What's New in the IBM Lotus Notes Client

Information Available Online

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21264877
 What's New in Lotus Notes 8 client?
 Standard Configuration
 Substantially-Improved User Interface
– Built atop the open eclipse.org Java environment
– Utilizes IBM Lotus Expeditor® for foundational capabilities
 Incorporates IBM Lotus Symphony™ productivity editors
 Delivers composite application capabilities
 Does everything that Notes does today for mail/calendar/NSF-based
applications.
 Basic Configuration
 Runs only the existing Notes engine
 Delivers some new Notes 8 features

Available Online
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21264877
 Lotus Notes 8 RAM & DISK Requirements

Minimum RAM Recommended RAM Minimum Disk

Release 7.0 256 MB 512 MB 256 MB

Release 8.0

Standard (XP) 512 MB 1 GB 900 MB

Standard
1 GB 1.5 GB 900 MB
(Vista)

Basic 256 MB 512 MB 256 MB

 Lotus Notes & Domino 8 Technical Requirements
 Supported Operating System Versions
 Processors Supported
 RAM & DISK

All Information Available Online

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/sysreqs.html
 Supported Configurations for Notes & Domino 8
 Client, Server & Template Interoperability
Notes 5, 6 and 7 Clients
Mail 5, 6 and 7 Templates
Domino 5, 6 and 7 Servers
 “Supported”, “Supported during upgrade only”, and “Unsupported”
 Needed configurations for new Notes/Domino 8 features to
function

Technote Available Online

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21264690
 Release 8 Readiness
 If you customize, update the 8.0 templates with your changes
 Lotus Notes Companion Products
IBM Lotus Sametime®, IBM Lotus Quickr®, IBM Lotus
Connections®...
Notes Traveler

 3rd Party Products

Backup, Aniti-Virus, or SPAM utilities...
Blackberry® Enterprise Server

Support Information for BES

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21266138
 Other Considerations
 Ensure integrity of existing backups
Save copy of notes.ini and server id file
Verify recent backups taken and retrievable

 New Hardware?
Move to new hardware Before or After the upgrade, not
recommended at the same time
 Test, Test, Test and lastly Test
Mission Critical Applications
 Best Practices Upgrading to Release 8
 Small & Medium Businesses
# of Users 10,000 or less
# of Servers 50 or less
 Upgrading Small & Medium Businesses

1. Upgrade the Notes clients that administrators will use to edit

and operate on the Domino Directory
2. Upgrade Administration Server of Domino Directory
3. Replicate the Domino Directory to the other servers
4. Upgrade the Hub servers
5. Upgrade the Mail servers
6. Upgrade the SMTP servers
 Upgrading Small & Medium Businesses

7. Upgrade the Application/Web servers

8. Upgrade 3rd Party/Companion Product servers
9. Upgrade the General Population to Lotus Notes 8.0.1
10. Replace design of mail files with MAIL8.NTF
 Upgrading Small & Medium Businesses
 Upgrading Domino Servers – Let's Get Started
Shutdown the Domino Server to be upgraded “cleanly”
Install Release 8 of Domino
Copy Customized Templates into place
Run Design Task
– Refreshes design of system databases
Run Updall Task
– Rebuilds views with design or collation changes
Restart the Domino Server
Proceed to “Next” server
 Release 8.0.1 64BIT Domino for AIX & Windows
 32BIT Domino to 64BIT Domino Upgrade
All existing full-text indexes will be discarded and rebuilt
 Windows Only
All existing views currently built will be discarded and rebuilt

 Best Practices just recommended for upgrading a Domino Server to

64 Bit Domino still hold true
Updall process will take longer to run
– See Appendix for how to use indirect files
Upgrading to IBM Lotus Notes Release 8
 Upgrading to IBM Lotus Notes Release 8
 Release 5 Notes Clients
Upgrade-By-Mail is still supported

 Release 6, 7 or 8 Notes Clients

IBM Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade
 3rd Party

 Presentation - Deploying IBM Lotus Notes 8 Clients

 IBM Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade

IBM Redpaper: Understanding Lotus Nots Smart Upgrade

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/redp4180.html
 IBM Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade
 Advantages
Automatic prompting for end user
Can specify deadline for upgrade
Can specify groups of users to upgrade
Built-in tracking capability
Can use with Seamless Mail Upgrade
Available for Linux starting with Release 8.0

 Presentation - Deploying IBM Lotus Notes 8 on Linux

IBM Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade
 IBM Lotus Notes Web Kits Sizes

Notes Client Only All Client

Release 7.0 193,487,776 199,132,376

Release 8.0

Standard 434,588,672 471,943,680

Basic 159,573,808 168,885,720

 Notes & Domino Developer Domains
 Notes & Domino Developers
~1000 Users
~120 Servers
 Release 6.5.6, 7.0.3, 7.0.4 Beta, 8.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.2 Beta and
8.5 Beta
Admin Server of Domino Directory always runs latest
Domino Directory replicates freely
 Smart Upgrade available to all users
Upgrading the Enterprise
 Best Practices Upgrading to Release 8
 Enterprise
# of Users 10,000 or greater
# of Servers 50 or greater
 Upgrading the Enterprise
 Many weeks or even months to upgrade all servers
 End-users want incredible new Release 8 UI ASAP
 Minimal impact
Configure Domino Directory ACL so design flows in a single
direction
– Admin Server of Domino Directory flows to
– Hub Servers flows to
– Spoke Servers
No Backflow of Directory Changes as you upgrade in reverse
order
 Domino Directory Design in the Enterprise

Design flows out from Central Admin Server

Admin Server only

Regional
Hubs

Spoke Servers
 Upgrading the Enterprise

1. Upgrade the Notes clients that administrators will use to edit

and operate on the Domino Directory
2. Upgrade the SMTP servers
3. Upgrade the Mail servers
4. Upgrade the General Population to Lotus Notes 8.0.1
5. Replace design of mail files with MAIL8.NTF
 Upgrading the Enterprise

6. Upgrade the Application/Web servers

7. Upgrade 3rd Party/Companion Product servers
8. Upgrade the Hub Servers
9. Upgrade the Administration Server of the Domino Directory
 Upgrading the Enterprise
 Domino 8 Directory Template
Two critical views utilized when a Notes Client or another Domino
Server attempts to authenticate with any given server are the
($USERS) and ($SERVERACCESS) views
The design upgrade will result in views modified being rebuilt
from scratch when first opened
Authentication attempts will be blocked from completing until
these two views are finish rebuilding
 Upgrading “First” Spoke Server
 Shutdown the Domino Server “cleanly”
 Install Release 8 of Domino
 Copy Customized Templates in place
 Run Design Task
 Updates design of system databases
 Run Updall Task
– Rebuilds existing views because of design or collation
change
 Upgrading “First” Spoke Server (continued)
 Copy upgraded Domino Directory to Network Share
 Remove Domino Directory Template (PUBNAMES.NTF)
 Restart the Domino Server
 Proceed to “Next” Domino Server
 Upgrading “Next” Domino Server
 Shutdown the Domino Server “cleanly”
 Install Release 8 of Domino
 Copy Customized Templates in place
 Copy already upgraded Domino Directory from Network Share
 Run Design Task
 Updates design of system databases

 Run Updall Task

Rebuilds existing views because of design or collation changes
 Upgrading “Next” Domino Server (continued)
 Remove Domino Directory Template
 Restart the Domino Server
 Proceed to “Next” Domino Server
 IBM Global Services
 81 Mail Domains and 10 Application Domains
 1025 Domino Servers
18 iSeries, 45 zSeries, 962 pSeries
Release 7.0.2FP2

 Approximately 490K Notes Clients

Majority Standardized on Microsoft ® Windows XP Service Pack 2
Release 7.0.2

 IBM Standard Software Installer used for majority Lotus Notes

upgrades
 IBM Research utilizes IBM Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade
 IBM Global Services Deployment
 Most aggressive client/server deployment of any release
15 Domino 8 servers with ~32,000 users
– All Mail Servers to be 8.01 by mid-year 2008
– All Applications Servers to be 8.01 by year-end 2008
●
Application servers take longer because of stringent testing

 Notes 8 beta participants expanded from original numbers based

on very high demand
 Deploying Notes 8.0 (Standard) to beta customers until March 2008
– 25,000 Notes 8.0 users by year-end 2007
– Target is for full 8.01 deployment by August 2008

 No deployment blocking issues found

Best Practices Upgrading to ODS48
 Best Practices Upgrading to ODS48
 On-Disk-Structure Change
 Features Requiring ODS48
 Best Practice Upgrading to ODS48
 On-Disk-Structure Change
 Release 6 and Release 7 both utilize ODS43
Admins loved this and found upgrades from 6 to 7 a snap!
 Prior to Release 8, an ODS upgrade occurred the first time a
database was compacted following an upgrade.
 With Release 8, an upgrade to ODS48 is optional
 CREATE_R8_DATABASES=1 in notes.ini
 A copy-style compaction of database is done.
– e.g. (n)compact -c names.nsf
 Although optional, ODS48 is required to enable some new
features & performance improvements in Release 8
 Features Requiring ODS48
 Enhanced User Activity Logging
Reads & Writes become Reads, Adds, Updates & Deletes
 Features Requiring ODS48
 Optimized User Renames and Deletes
Major improvement in Adminp Processing time
 I/O Reduction and Performance improvements
On-Demand collation builds
– Mail file with MAIL8.NTF and ODS48 takes advantage
 Database Design Compression
New databases created from mail8.ntf are 11mb with Design
Compression compared to 27mb without
 Features Requiring ODS48
 Document Data Compression (Release 8.0.1)
Tests have shown anywhere from 25% - 40% size reduction
when data compression has been enabled
CPU cost on non-hardware compression platforms is negligible
On zSeries, there is a large penalty for enabling on transactional
logged servers
Not recommended on databases that have high read to write
ratio. e.g. names.nsf

Presentation - IBM Lotus Domino Storage

 Features Requiring ODS48

Database Original Size Design Compression Data Compression

Name (compact -c) (% Decrease) (% Decrease)

mail1.nsf 4,775,739,392 4,745,330,688 (0.64%) 2,758,279,168 (41.87%)

mail2.nsf 2,729,967,616 2,710,306,816 (0.72%) 1,503,395,840 (44.53%)
mail3.nsf 2,613,575,680 2,418,278,400 (7.47%) 1,408,237,568 (41.77%)
mail4.nsf 2,508,718,080 2,427,977,728 (3.22%) 1,232,863,232 (49.22%)

mail5.nsf 2,315,517,952 2,304,245,760 (0.49%) 1,388,576,768 (39.74%)

mail6.nsf 740,818,944 717,488,128 (3.15%) 427,294,720 (40.45%)
mail7.nsf 706,215,936 675,545,088 (4.34%) 325,844,992 (51.77%)
16,390,553,600 15,999,172,608 (2.4%) 9,044,492,288 (44.5%)
 Best Practice Upgrading to ODS48
 Shutdown the Domino 8 Server “cleanly”
 Set CREATE_R8_DATABASES=1 in notes.ini
 Optionally enable Database Design and/or Document Data
compression prior to doing initial conversion from ODS43 to ODS48
so only a single copy-style compaction needed
– (n)compact -n -v mail
 Run Compact Task using copy-style switch
(n)compact -c

 Restart the Domino 8 Server

Release 8 Deployment Experiences
 “Unread Marks in Folders”
 Release 8.0 Standard Configuration
 Folders require new ($Inbox) design to get Unread Bolding & Count
 “Advanced Menus”
 Unchecked by default in Release 8 Standard Configuration
 “Design Refresh/Replace Issues”
 Prohibit design refresh or replace to modify
 “Calendar Ghosting”
 Show “unprocessed” calendar entries in your calendar view
– Release 8 Notes Client using MAIL8.NTF
– Release 8 Domino Server for receipt of calendar invite
 “Recent Contacts & Mail Addressing”
 Recent Contacts populated automatically
Dramatically improves mail addressing

 In Release 8, if wrong John Smith gets into your Recent Contacts

 e.g. Joe Smith/Boulder/IBM vs Joe Smith/Westford/IBM
 No easy way to remove unwanted entry unless you go to a hidden view
 Fixed in Release 8.0.1
 “Conversations Feature”
 New in Notes and Domino 8 is the conversations feature which
allows all messages of the same thread to be grouped together
 Known Issue: Modification of old documents may occur
 Fixed in Release 8.0.1

 Know Issue: Broken Conversation Threads

 Under certain conditions messages belonging to same thread will not be
grouped together
 Improved in Release 8.0.1

See Technote http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?

uid=swg21284223 for a more detailed description
 “Mail Inbox Maintenance”
 Configured for each Domino Server
 Server Record -> Server Tasks Tab -> Administration Process Tab
 Selected users: & User's Home Server as configured in Person Document
 “Database Redirection”

 Requires
 Release 8 Domino Administrator
 Release 8 Notes Client
 Release 8 Domino Server

 Adminp processing will automatically generate database redirect files (e.g.

jpaganet.nrf) for functions like move mail requests
 “New Columns for Design and Data Compression”
 Release 8.0.1 Lotus Domino Administrator
 Files Panel has three new columns for Design, Data and LZ1
Compression
 “Design & Document Data Compression”
 When inheritance is enabled on mail file
Design Task may disable property on down-level server
Disabled property will then replicate to Release 8 Server
 Workarounds
Disable Design Task on down-level servers
Disable Inheritance on replicas on down-level servers
Set Inheritance to StdR8Mail on all replicas
Upgrade all servers to Release 8
 “Message Recall”
 Allows users to retrieve Lotus Notes mail they accidentally or
inappropriately sent to the wrong people
Requires
– Release 8 Notes Client using MAIL8.NTF to initiate recall
– Release 8 Domino Server for recipient of message being recalled
 “Out of Office Service”
 Eliminates delays and latency delivering out-of-office notifications
 Requires
Release 8 Domino Server to enable service on server
Release 8 Notes Client with MAIL8.NTF to turn on OOO
 “Compress MIME Encoded Attachments”
 Once all mail servers at Release 6.5.6, 7.0.3 or 8
On Release 8.0 SMTP or Mail Servers
– Set MimeCompressAttachments=1 in notes.ini

 Notes Clients with a local mail file replica would also need to be
at Release 6.5.6, 7.0.3 or 8
 “Smart Upgrade & Multi-User Silent Install”
 Using Silent Install to upgrade a Muiti-User Notes Client from
Release 6.x or 7.x to Release 8 fails installation
Fixed in Release 8.0.1
IBMers value: “Dedicated to every clients success”

Q&A
Pete Hampton - pete@uk.ibm.com
 Appendix
 Using Convert Task to Upgrade Mail Files on Domino Server
 Using Indirect Files
 Using Convert Task to Upgrade Mail Files
 Run CONVERT Task to build indirect file containing all mail file names for users
whom this is their home server in the Domino Directory
 (n)convert -l mailfiles.ind

 Run CONVERT Task against the indirect file to upgrade to mail8.ntf design
 Optionally use -s to override prohibit design replace or refresh on folders
 Optionally use -u to upgrade all folders with mail8.ntf $InBox design
 (n)convert -s –u -f mailfiles.ind * mail8.ntf

Note: In Release 8, The CONVERT Task in Release 8 will not update the
“Replicate Unread Marks” setting from the template. Additionally, if inheritance
is disabled in mail file, it will leave disabled else it will update to 'StdR8Mail”.
 Using Indirect Files
 Allows multiple maintenance tasks to process different sets of
databases concurrently instead of a single maintenance task
processing databases sequentially resulting in significant time
savings
 Create a text file with “.ind” extension and add list of databases
and/or directories into the text file
 Invoke maintenance task against the indirect file
 (n)fixup mailfiles1.ind
 (n)compact -c -n -v mailfiles1.ind
 (n)updall mailfiles1.ind

 Invokde multiple maintenance tasks against multiple indirect files

 (n)updall mailfiles1.ind
 (n)updall mailfiles2.ind
 (n)updall mailfiles3.ind
 Indirect Files Example
You have 100 mailfiles you want to run updall against and
machine has 4 CPU so create 4 indirect files

mailfiles1.ind contains
mail\mail1.nsf
mail\mail2.nsf
...
mail\mail25.nsf
mailfiles2.ind contains
mail\mail26.nsf
mail\mail27.nsf
...
mail\mail50.nsf
mailfiles3.ind contains
mail\mail51.nsf
mail\mail52.nsf
...
mail\mail75.nsf
 Indirect Files Example (continued)
mailfiles4.ind contains
mail\mail76.nsf
mail\mail77.nsf
...
mail\mail100.nsf

So now instead of running a single updall process

(n)updall mail

you could run 4 updall processes concurrently

(n)updall mailfiles1.ind
(n)updall mailfiles2.ind
(n)updall mailfiles3.ind
(n)updall mailfiles4.ind

and complete the same operation in a much faster time

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