CrashTestChix

Want to test just how much you know about using Sametime or perhaps want to learn a new trick or two? Or perhaps you have users who might need to boost their knowledge about Sametime?  Join Tom Duff and me for our Consultant in Your Pocket webcast on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM EST – Sametime A User’s Perspective

Some of the subjects we’re going to cover: 

• How to manage your Contact list

• How to use the Rich Text features to make your chats more effective

• How to get started with Audio/Video

• How to take Sametime on the road with Sametime Mobile

• Learn that the Sametime Meeting Center isn’t just for meetings

• Learn about the Sametime Gateway and Sametime Advanced

• And finally a brief overview of what’s now available in 8.5.1 (from a user perspective)

We challenge you NOT to learn something new!

There has been some interesting discussion over the past couple of days about Domino Directory Independence. 

But I’ve been doing some further thinking about this.  Why would you want to store person data in Active Directory?  What exactly is in the Person document?  Have you looked under its hood?  Are there attributes available in Active Directory that would match one for one those that are currently used in the Person document?  Well the answer is no.  Having done a fair bit of TDI connectivity between Domino and LDAP, I’ve come to realize that you either have to task existing attributes for Domino that aren’t being used by Active Directory, or you need to add them.  Do you know how to add them?  Do you have an LDAP or Active Directory expert in your environment?  Is Active Directory stable?  What if you don’t want to depend on Active Directory?  What if you want to move to the cloud?

Okay, so what if all those attributes were available?  Then yes, using LDAP or Active Directory as your primary directory might make more sense.  As the linkages for desktop policies and mail routing and ACL’s, etc., etc., would be easier to recreate.   But again, stop and think about it a moment.   They don’t currently exist, so building them is a huge project.  Do we as customers really get the most out of something like Directory Independence versus being able to use Active Directory or LDAP for authentication for Domino, or being able to customize the Domino Directory easily and quickly, when precious IBM development resources can be used to fix existing problems or coming up with an entirely new solution? 

IamLUG 2010 – what can I say? WOW!  Great conference, great content, great people! 

Here are the slides for my two sessions:

One Directory to Rule Them All! Yes!  (Gabriella Davis begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting & Marie Scott)

You’ve heard buzzwords like single-sign on, single userid, or authentication management, but also heard that they were a nightmare to implement. Or perhaps you always wanted to use another directory - like Active Directory for your Sametime, Web, IMAP or Traveler password authentication but thought it required a 3rd party tool or something installed on the Domino server? In this session we'll show you how to configure your Domino server to authenticate with either the HTTP Password or the LDAP directory password without a server reboot! We'll extend that idea to demonstrate how with a little bit of magic and a sprinkling of Tivoli Directory Integrator you can get closer to that simple single userid or directory system you’ve always wanted.

Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) - The Best Free Tool You’ve Never Heard Of!

(Tom Duff & Marie Scott)

Tivoli Directory Integrator, or TDI for short, is a great (free!) tool you can use in your Domino environment. TDI moves and formats data from a large list of different data sources and targets using preconfigured connectors that come with the package. And don't be mislead by the "Directory" part of the name! TDI can take data from nearly any data source (even directories) and integrate it into nearly any other data source (even directories). Oh, and did we mention it's free if you're licensed to use Domino?

P.S. And did I mention that TDI is free, free free?!

Google has been released a number of new features for Google Apps domain administrators including yesterday’s announcement regarding user policy management.

While these features are all stepping the Google cloud in the right direction in terms of user management, what is perplexing to me as a Google administrator, is you’re never notified when those changes are going to occur in your domain.  The cpanel interface in the domains that I manage looks nothing like what Google portrays in their “future” screen prints.   So maybe I’ll login one day and poof our domain will have been “upgraded.” 

So just a word -- Google, Microsoft, and IBM please take note – cloud administrators like to be notified in advance when changes are to occur!

There’s still time to sign up to present (a few slots are left) or to attend!  Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity!

Be sure to check out the recent announcement about 50% off Lotus Certification.  And the TackItOn is a great opportunity if you want to turbo start your skills in Domino Optimization, iPhone development or xPages!

See you there! :) 

I suggested a method for using the iNotes redirect database as a means for providing iNotes failover in the event of a disaster or during maintenance periods.  I want to follow up on the post due to some comments I’ve received.

As with any other Domino process, there are possibly many ways to provide failover.  This is certainly only one means of doing so.  And I’m certainly in no way suggesting this is the ONLY way or the BEST way.  In our environment we also provide load balancing and failover using the Websphere Edge Server, which I have also blogged about previously.

We have multiple copies of the Autologin form based on the type of failover we want to do, and we simply rename the form.  So we are not recoding the $$HTMLHead field change each time we want this failover to occur.  And, because we are using the redirect database to redirect at the domain level rather than the server level, creating separate redirect profiles has not been the most effective means of providing the same level of failover.

I hope that what you have walked away with is the realization that you can customize the redirect database to suit your needs, and as with any other Domino process, you can in your test environment, experiment to see what works best for you!  Good luck!

Have you ever had a set of cluster servers fail – perhaps due to a hardware outage?  And iNotes users on those servers are no longer able to connect to their primary server or automatically failover to their cluster mate.

Or if you’re doing maintenance on one set of cluster servers, and want to have your iNotes users connect to their cluster mate during the maintenance period, you can do that.  Here’s how.

If you are using the iNotes Redirect database based on the iwaredir.ntf template, you can make the following modifications to the database which will replace the server name in the URL string with the corresponding cluster server name.

In the database, find the AutoLogin Form.  It contains a field called $$HTMLHEAD.  The $$HTMLHEAD field builds the URL string to direct Domino to the server and database name of the user.

In the formula language of this field, look for the following lines of code:

ServerNameChange="2";@If(RevProxyServerName="";wmrhttps+"://"+wmrHTTPHostName+wmrFinalPort;RevProxyServerName+"/"+wmrFQDNHost);

ServerNameChange="2";@If(RevProxyServerName=””;wmrhttps+://"+@ReplaceSubstring(wmrHTTPHostName;"ClusterServer101":"ClusterServer102":"ClusterServer103";"ClusterServer201":"ClusterServer202":"ClusterServer203")+wmrFinalPort;RevProxyServerName+”/” +wmrFQDNHost);

What this will do is replace the following in your URL string:

ClusterServer101 is replaced by ClusterServer201

ClusterServer102 is replaced by ClusterServer202

ClusterServer103 is replaced by ClusterServer 203

Thus the user will be redirected to their mail file on the cluster mate without having to take any action or even realize that they have been “redirected” to their cluster server.

We have used this method for 5 years in a very large cluster environment.  Our code is a little simpler as we have distinct names for the Servers between clusters, so we only have to use the following code:

ServerNameChange="2";@If(RevProxyServerName=””;wmrhttps+://"+@ReplaceSubstring(wmrHTTPHostName;"Alpha":"Beta")+wmrFinalPort;RevProxyServerName+”/” +wmrFQDNHost);

This recently was put to the test when a colleague of mine was able to use the same code during a disaster situation when approximately 3000 iNotes users were unable to access their mail.  Once he implemented this code, they were seamlessly redirected to the cluster set that was available and continue with their work!  And when he shared the code with IBM Support...their response was "brilliant!" 

We recently discovered a database that had some corruption due to the document compression bug related to 8.5.1.  We have received a hot fix from Lotus Support to prevent any further database corruption, but we have had to repair and resolve issues with a number of databases.

As I was working on this particular database, after running fixup on the database, I attempted to run a folder upgrade, as we have found that some of the corruption relates to older folder designs.  The folder upgraded failed. The error message returned indicated that the agent had exceeded the 64k limit.

So I started investigating further.  We have a little agent we run to look at folder structures.  It will look through each folder, determine how many documents in a folder, and prepare a list of all folders.  I ran that agent.  And waited, and waited, and waited.

The results came back.  The user’s database contained 2,937 folders.  Yes, you are reading that correctly.  2,937!  This is an all time record for the users at our site.  And we’ve had a few who have run amok with folders.

My next step was to push data from a backup replica to the repaired replica to restore the corrupted documents that had been deleted during the fixup.  Again, I waited, and waited, and waited.

And here is the dialog that appeared after the replication completed.  Yes 40,191,544 databases replicated!  Well done Domino is all I could say!

  

My best guess is that because the folder structure exceeded the 64k limit on naming structure, somehow this affected the report back to the replication statistics dialog.  I confirmed that the correct number of documents were restored by reviewing the database properties. 

Sometimes you just have to see it to “believe it.”

Summer breeze…makes me feel fine!  I’ll be heading to St. Louis for a few days in August to attend and present at IAMLUG.  I hope to see you there!

Of course I couldn’t resist an opportunity to speak about one of my favorite products – Tivoli Directory Integrator - with my TDI blog series co-author Tom “Duffbert” Duff:

Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) - The Best Free Tool You've Never Heard Of  

Tivoli Directory Integrator, or TDI for short, is a great (free!) tool you can use in your Domino environment. TDI moves and formats data from a large list of different data sources and targets using preconfigured connectors that come with the package. And don't be mislead by the "Directory" part of the name! TDI can take data from nearly any data source (even directories) and integrate it into nearly any other data source (even directories). Oh, and did we mention it's free if you're licensed to use Domino?

(This session is for both developers AND administrators!)

The fabulous “Dame of Domino” Gabriella Davis and I will be presenting a session about directories and authentication – a session you don’t want to miss! 

We deployed Lotus Notes Traveler in November 2009.  And today I realized that we’ve had it in place seven months to the day.  While normally having a server or product in place for a short period of time isn’t a cause for celebration, in this case I think it is.

Since November, we’ve added 196 devices to our dedicated Traveler server.  Twenty-nine of which are iPads (most of which have been added in the last few weeks).  Users can install and connect to Traveler without much assistance (if any).  This alone may be reason for an administrator to celebrate! 

The support issues we’ve had have been minor (and I really mean minor).  We are running Traveler 8.5.1.1 Build 201002131306 on a Windows 2003 Enterprise Server SP2 server.  And we rarely have to touch it.

Our user community includes only faculty and staff.  And believe me, they have high expectations as to what expect from a mobile device.  Many of them are former Blackberry users who switched from a corporate device to a personally owned iPhone, iPad, etc.  They may have switched devices, but their need for their mail, calendar, and contacts in real time didn’t change. 

If you’re in the only in the “consideration” phase regarding Traveler, give it a second thought as it will be a win/win for you and your user community.

Join Francie Tanner begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Gabriella Davis and myself on Thursday May 27 at 11 AM- 12 PM EDT for our "Top Chefs" Share Recipes for Avoiding Everyday Server Disasters session.   This is a Lotusphere Comes to You Online Session brought you by the Lotus Users Group and Sherpa Software.  

An article was recently posted on notes.net regarding how to achieve high availability with iNotes.  In the article, Domino clustering, the iNotes redirector database, and a high end dedicated load balancer appliance is used to provide high web availability.  If you are fortunate to have a load balancer appliance in your environment, be sure to take advantage of it for your Domino web environment. 

However, several years ago (in 2005 to be precise) when implementing a clustered iNotes-only environment, we did not have such a device available, nor the budget for it. So what do you do in a pinch?  You get creative! 

We installed two Windows 2000 Advanced servers, each running Websphere Edge Server.   We then installed two more Windows 2000 servers, each running Domino, with a customized version of the redirect database.  These servers were clustered to each other.  Websphere Edge Server was configured to load balance and provide failover for the redirect servers as well as the web servers on the back end.

Remarkably, this implementation is still in place five years later.  And it WORKS!  The two redirect servers act as the central login point for all web authentications for this particular population of iNotes user. 

The two Websphere Edge Servers provide redundancy for each other, as that is a service that Edge Server can provide.  And don’t get panicky about the Websphere name.  This is not as difficult to install as Websphere Application Server or Websphere Portal.  You do need a good understanding of networking – especially if you are going to use NAT or the Cache Proxy service that is available via the Edge Server.  Websphere Edge Server components are available via the Passport Advantage site.

And because we include several Domino attributes including, mail file, and Domino server name in our LDAP directory (using the magic of Tivoli Directory Integrator!), the redirect servers act as the central authentication point for all Domino servers supported by this configuration.  Users don’t have to remember a specific server name, or that in the case of a server outage that they have to go to the cluster mate.  The combination of Websphere Edge Server and iNotes redirect allows them to continue to use iNotes almost unaware that a server has failed!  Which of course is always a goal of Domino Administrators right?  Happy users!

 

  

New API released: Google Apps Audit API

Posted: 19 May 2010 09:13 PM PDT

I have been fortunate enough to have worked with email through many of its phases of evolution.  From Host-based systems such as BITNET, IBM’s 8100, S/36, Profs, Officevision, DEC All-in-One, Wang Mail, to LAN-based systems such as cc:mail, IBM Workgroup, Banyan Vines, and Lotus Notes.  And integrated these systems with software such as IBM’s DISOSS and Softswitch and proceeded on to the early days of SMTP connectivity.

Many of the systems listed above have gone to the great IT graveyard in the sky.  New technology is being developed in minutes rather than hours/days/weeks/years.  And based on my own personal experience, whenever an article included the tolling of the death knell of a product, or the introduction of new technology – the reaction of management and users almost always follow Küber-Ross’s model of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

And after reading again the posts that stirred up “Notes is dead” again, it occurred to me that the authors are speaking not to the client software itself as much as the development tools that enable they and other developers to create applications that run on Domino servers.  Look at any list of new programming languages. Why wouldn’t it be IBM’s strategy to incorporate these new technologies?  They surely will work to do as long as they want Notes/Domino and Domino related products to be a viable option in the marketplace.

And finally to sum, I paraphrase the great Gershwin song…“Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off…”

It’s back!  The Space Used column has returned as an option in the Files preferences in the Admin client.  It’s currently available in the 8.5.2 CD4 beta client.  I and a number of other administrators missed this option when it was pulled from an earlier version of 8.5.  Here's hoping it will be included when 8.5.2 goes gold!

  

We as Domino Administrators love our users?  Right?  Of course we do!  Okay maybe not so much.  But with 8.5.2 if this option goes to gold, we might at least receive fewer phone calls! 

How many of you have received the phone call when a user sees the popup dialog that the server is not responding and that they should select their cluster server?  Or better yet that they just get the error message that the server is not responding?  In the CD4 version of the 8.5.2 Beta a dynamic desktop policy setting is currently included to allow “silent” failover when the server goes down.

 

Another setting I’m in favor of is the “Enable upgrade of all local NSFs to latest ODS version.”  This is especially useful if you are trying to standardize your users’ desktops or resolve a problem that you may think is related to the current ODS version.

I would however, like to see some additional development in the area of policy administration.  Perhaps a method for testing policies prior to application, and certainly some improved methods for determining when and what has been applied.  Policies and settings are powerful tools, but at this point they’re still more like chain saws when what you really want to wield is a scalpel!

I’ve been amused by some of the recent postings about the so called “death” of the Notes client.  And several things instantly crossed my mind.

We as Domino Administrators may not be involved in the configuration and management of the operating system software and hardware upon which we run Domino.  And as you know, the more people involved with managing a server, the more chance something is going to go awry.

To avoid a disaster waiting to happen, take a look at these settings in your server Notes.ini:

                Reset_Time_Interval

                Restart_Time_Action

                Last_Domino_Time

What are these settings and why are these “must haves”?  As you know Domino by default relies on the operating system (and associated hardware time).  Imagine that the following happens in your environment:

Your eager OS system administrator changes the date and time on a server to 7/3/2010.  And because he is in a timezone that uses a dd/mm/yyyy format he merrily goes along his way.  But let’s take this one step further – the servers he’s managing are in a timezone that uses mm/dd/yyyy.  Domino periodically checks the OS time every 5 minutes to synch the Domino system time with the OS time.  If your eager OS admin had changed the date/time, the next time it synchs -- Domino would change its clock  to July 3^rd rather than March 7th.  Are you with me so far?  Hopefully you’re beginning to sense the global impact of this change.

How do you avoid this?  Step one – include Reset_Time_Interval in your Notes.ini or your Server configuration document.  Reset_Time_Interval setting is the maximum time difference allowed between “Domino time” and the “OS time”.  The setting is in seconds with the default being 5 minutes.   So let’s say you add Reset_Time_Interval=600 (or 10 minutes).  And Domino time is 8:15 AM and the OS time is 8:42 AM, Domino would not reset itself to 8:42 AM. And issuing a Set System Time would not reset the Domino time to match the OS time either.

Step two – include Restart_Time_Action=1 in your Notes ini.  This setting is a little more complicated.  If this setting is set to 1, the server will not restart if the Domino time does not match the OS time and the server has been down longer than the Restart_Time_Interval, the server will not start.   This is like an emergency brake.  The server is not going to start with an OS time of 3 days in advance if this setting is in place if the time doesn’t match your Domino time.  This is especially useful if you know your system administrator is doing hardware maintenance.

Additionally, when Domino is shut down it adds Last_Domino_Time setting to the Notes.ini.  You may not have noticed this Notes.ini parameter,  but it includes the previous Domino time  and uses this time value when calculating the time Domino should use – especially in conjunction with the values of Reset_Time_Interval and Restart_Time_Action.

If none of these settings exist in your Notes.ini, then the OS time will be used upon server restart.

I would recommend working with these options on your test server (which does not replicate with your production environment), until you feel comfortable in your understanding of how they work and how best to set them for your environment.  Consider the impact of not including them. Do you want to have modify what could possibly be thousands of documents to adjust for time correction?  Remember what this was like for the US Daylight Saving Time issue?  Not something anyone of us wants to tackle any time soon!!! 

  

Join Marie Scott, Franziska Tanner, and Gabriella Davis on May 27, 2010 at 11:00 AM EDT as they present their Lotusphere session:

“Top Chefs” Share Recipes for Avoiding Everyday Server Disasters

LotusphereComesToYou Oneline 2010 is brought to you by LotusUserGroup.Org. 

Be sure to register online to attend!

We recently upgraded our two primary Domino servers to Domino 8.5.1 FP1 IF1.  All and all things have been stable, but we have had a few HTTP related crashes.  So off to Fix Central we went.  We attempted to install dwaf_v8.5.1.1_304.2CHF1. 

Instructions in the hotfix indicate that you should install the following:

dwabl.jar  in the following directories:

Windows:            <domino program directory>\jvm\lib\ext

Solaris/Linux/AIX :  <domino program directory>\jvm\lib\ext

Well the first problem we discovered was that the fixpack did not include that jar.  It included dlt.jar.

Secondly, there is no dlt.jar in the \jvm\lib\ext directory.

Upon contacting Lotus Support they told us that a new DWA Hotfix set had just become available but was not on Fix Central yet!  (Imagine my surprise!).

When we explained that the jar file was not found in the directory, they recommended reinstalling 8.5.1.  Given that these are productions servers, that option was certainly out of the question.

We then did some digging around and found that the dlt.jar along with the dwabl.jar are located in the

<domino program directory>\ndext directory.

We have subsequently sent this information on to Lotus Support.  So if you are in the process of installing patches, it’s good to read the readme files thoroughly and know that you might need to do some file searches to locate a file rather than rely on the directory information included with the fix.

Postscript:  There appears that there may be an issue with the location of the jar files as placed by the 8.5.1 install.  We're currently working with Lotus Support to identify this.

SANs or storage area networks, were a topic of discussion at this Lotusphere’s Gurupalooza.  See Paul Mooney’s post.

My comments included:

·         Educate yourself about SANs – you don’t have to be a hardware or a storage geek to learn the basics.  When you go into the next hardware meeting your eyes won’t glaze over when the SAN administrators start talking about controllers, and LUNs, etc., etc. 

·         Find out what Domino needs to run best on a SAN.  Here’s one IBM Technote 7002613.  The Storage Network Industry Association is a good source or contact your SAN vendor for advice.

·         Start keeping track of I/O statistics.  If you suspect that I/O is causing an issue with Dominoperformance begin recording statistics.  SAN architecture changes require planning, and can be expensive. Do your homework; have your statistics ready in order to justify your request.

You can run Domino on a SAN.  In our environment, we currently run everything, but the Notes data directory on our SAN.  This includes archive transaction logs.  So with careful planning and monitoring you can do this!

BOOT103 Running with Scissors: Sharpen Your Skills for a Pain-Free IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 Upgrade

Francie Tanner, Gabriella Davis, Marie Scott

BP103 “Top Chefs” Share Recipes for Avoiding Everyday Server Disasters

Francie Tanner, Marie Scott

SHOW106 Configuring The Tivoli Directory Integrator for IBM Lotus Domino and Active Directory

Tom Duff, Marie Scott

As a first time speaker at Lotusphere 2010 - here’s my insight.

Speaking at Lotusphere 2010 was a great, great experience.  Scary?  Yes! Was it a lot of work? Yes!  Anyone who even remotely thinks that speakers don’t put a lot of effort into preparation, please come talk to me.  The speakers who have been speaking for years in a row with many sessions, who are able to make it seem “easy” -- are “repeaters” for several reasons.  They do their homework, they are knowledgeable in their field, and they are good at what they do (speaking included).  My co-speakers: Gabriella Davis, Tom Duff, and Francie Tanner are prime examples.

A gleaming highlight of the Lotusphere 2010 week was sitting on the Nerd Girl’s Revenge panel with the following panelists:

·         Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM Software Group Channels

·         Akiba Saeedi,  Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, IBM Software Group

·         Mary Beth Raven, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, Lotus Product Design

·         Eileen Fitzgerald, Vice-President Product Management and Customer Delivery at GSX

·         Kristen Lauria, Vice President, Marketing and Channels, IBM Software Group

·         Moderator: Gabriella Davis, Technical Director, The Turtle Partnership

To sum it up – WOW! What an extraordinary group of women - each bringing a unique perspective to the panel.  I certainly gained a lot listening to the experiences shared amongst the panel and the audience.  There has been some chatter in the community about why such a panel or BOF is even necessary.  Do women really still have issues of equality in the IT industry?  Are women passed over for promotions or treated differently with regards to job performance than men?  Sadly - yes.  And not just in the Americas, but all over the world.  But the panel discussion wasn’t just about equality issues.  The topic of establishing mentoring relationships and the different types of mentors was discussed. The panel also touched on how women might become more effective leaders or managers and ensure that young girls might follow their interests and pursue careers in information technology, engineering or science. [See WITI – Women in Technology International.]  For a transcript see Lotus User Group for Celia Hamilton’s write up of the discussion.

I also attended the BOF Thursday morning.  Again the need for networking and the use of social network tools like Twitter, Facebook, Skype, or LinkedIn to establish informal or formal mentor relationships.  [A LinkedIn group – Nerd Girls – has been created as a follow-up.] Be sure to check out the group, contact me or the panel moderator if you have any suggestions for further discussion topics.