Bruce's Blog

   Currently, I have a Domino domain that is running on 8.5.1 servers, but it was originally created on version 4.5 about 10 years ago.  It's been upgraded over the years thru V5, V5, V7, & V8 on different hardware, but always running on Windows O/S.  Unfortunately, we're still running it mostly as if it were a V4/V5 domain.  We did implement transaction logging so we could enable DAOS.  We are also using a few policies.

   At this point, for a number of reasons (some political, some technical), we are thinking of creating a new Domino Domain in V8.5.1.  This will allow us to implement all the new stuff (DAOS, ID Vault, Policies, etc) cleanly so we know that we aren't carrying over any of the old bad habits.

   My question is, can anyone point me to some good documentation (either in existing help files, blog entries, IBM technotes, etc) that will help me set things up so the old domain and the new domain interact as seamlessly as possible during the transistion?  If we had a budget for this project, we would just bring in our local VAR, but we don't so I need to do this "on the cheap".

Thanks!

   Our current Domino domain is running V8.5 on Windows 2003 servers.  It was created way back in the 4.6 or 5.0 days.  Because of this, we still manage alot of it the old way we always have.  So, this means we also don't take advantage of all the new stuff like we could.  We just started using transaction logging this year when we migrated up to V8.5 so we could enable DAOS.  We are looking to install a new Domino domain (V8.5.1 when it comes out next week).  We're doing this for 2 reasons.  The first is so we can have a clean V8.5.1 domain so we can take advantage of alot of the new functionality (DAOS, ID Vault, Policies, etc).  The second is we have a couple of sisteer companies that are currently running Exchange that we are thinking of migrating to Domino so we can have a consolidated mail infrastructure.

   Ok, with this background out of the way, I have two options.  The first is to continue to use Windows as the operating system.  The other is to make the move into Linux.  If I go Windows, I can almost do the installation in my sleep.  With Linix, I'm sure I could install it and make it work, but I don't know the best practices (disk partitioning, what services to install and/or uninstall, etc).  Does anyone know of a good "Best Practices for Installing Linux for Domino" guide that's available?  We would most likely be going with SUSE for our Linux distro if that makes any difference.

    To set the stage.  We have been on Domino 7.02 for awhile.  Recently updated our servers to 8.02 then 8.5.  Clients are all running 7.02 with 7.02 template except me, I'm now on 8.5.  I'm the admin.  We've been using an explicit policy that used the registration and archive policy settings for awhile, bit have never implemented any of the others.  After upgrading to 8.5, I decided to started plating with all the other policy settings again.  I had another explicit policy (called test) for this.

  So far so good.  After discussion with my boss, we decided it was time to start seriously considering implementing the other policy settings.  I created a brand new explicit policy and assigned the test desktop, mail, and security settings to it.  Now for the mayhem part - I called it the same as our domino domain because after some testing, we were going to make it an organizational policy.  Looks like this is a BAD idea.  Even though all my policies were explicit, it looks like it treated the new one as organizational and rolled it out to all my users (without warning).

   So now, they were getting configuration changes made which were very obvious (like popping up new message warnings, locking client every 15 minutes, etc) and were set to not allow the individual to change them (these were test polict settings after all, not what we would actually necessarily want to use in production).  OOPS!!!!!!  To make it worse, one of those horrible bugs that is going around caught me and I've been home sick as a dog part ofg this week while we're trying to work our way out of this one.

   Looks like (hopefully) the worst is over and next week will be better.

   First, some background.  We have been a 7.02 environment for awhile (server, client, & mail template).  We have multiple partitioned and clustered servers across our wan.  We also have a 6.5 server running Sametime 6.5 for IM only.  Things have been working pretty well.  We have talked about migrating to V8, but a number of things have held us up.  First, V8.0 was quit stable enough for us.  Then when 8.01 & especially 8.02 came out, we had other priiorities (both other projects and finances).  Then the real financial crisis hit (rising energy costs, rising raw materials costs, and our major markets are automotive and housing so no new orders coming in).
 
   Well, last weekend, something happened that meant we couldn't stay on the sidelines anymore.  Last friday night all 3 of our mail servers crashed with "PANIC: Invalid pool free chain" faults.  Two of the server  re-booted automatically, but we had to manuaaly re-start one of the servers.  We didn't worry too much about it.  Things happen, ya know.  But when it happened again on Saturday night. it was time to take it more seriourly.  I started searching the forums on LDD.  I found a couple of entries with similoiar issues.  They referenced a technote about invalid internet messages crashing SMTP task.  The fix was to upgrade to a 7.02 hotfix, 7.03, or V8.

   Monday morning , aftertalking it over with my boss, we decided the most bang for the buck upgrade was to go to V8.02.  That evening, I started upgrading.  We have 9 Domino server on 4 physical servers at 3 sites.  The first 3 physical servers (3 Domino server partitions) upgraded fine in a couple of hours.  The last server's upgrade hosed in the middle with a JVM error.  It took me a couple of hours to resolve (finely had to manually remove registry entries and data folder and do a "fresh, clean" install).  This server has always had issues, so it wasn't terribly surprising that the upgrade hosed.

   Even with the problems.  my whole Domino environment (except Sametime) is now upgraded to V8.02 and running fine in one night.  I was already running the 8.02 client myself and now was able to upgrade my mail template to start utilizing all the new goodies (out od office service it great).  I used all the compression (LZ1 on attachments, design compression, & document compression) on both my mail file and archive mail file (we do server-based archiving).  Saw a 25% reduction in size.

   Now it's time to start planning the V8 client roll-out to our 150ish client users and 50-75 INotes users so they can see the same.

Since my entry in April about moving forward with a VMWare implementation to run Domino 8, Sametime 8, & Quickr 8, no progress has been made.  First it was a couple of higher priorities put this project on hold.  Then finance didn't want to spend that much money that month.  Then we've been working with a VAR on some other IT infrastructure projects and they mentioned going with VirtualIron instead of VMWare as our virtualization infrastructure to safe money.  Then the shake-up at VMWare happened.  So, now we are re-evaluating wether we should continue to go with VMWare or look at an alternative like VirtualIron.
My question is, has anyone used any of the XEN hypervisors (VirtualIron in particuliar) for their Domino environment?  If so, how's it worked out?
It looks like it should work OK according to what I've read so far, but it does introduce the question of application support.