Lotus Nut

Or: Can I DAOSify a Server With < 8.5 Clients?

Recently I have had some colleagues and clients asking about updating a Domino Server to 8.5 and turning on DAOS while still running a mix of 6 and 7 Notes Clients. There is some confusion related to some upgrade seminars that are happening that appear to be using this slideshow. Here is slide 18 that is causing some confusion:


The last bullet is causing confusion. Of course "Domino 6 and 7 clients will not recognize DAOS" - even the 8.0.x client would fall into this category as it was released pre-DAOS - DAOS is a server feature. However, there are no known problems with using an older client against a DAOSified mail template. Here is why: the Domino Server is aware of DAOS. Any requests for an attachment from clients, servers, or services such as BES will be honored by the Domino server sending the attachment. The server will still have to get the nlo file and serve it to the requesting client (or server) over the wire. And, if you are running local replicas it does not matter either because the replica will be pulled down with all attachments inside the database.

Do I recommend a long-term strategy of having 6 and 7 clients with an 8.5 server? Negative. But you can immediately reap some benefits by upgrading your server and enabling DAOS while you are working on your client rollout strategy. And, as the slide above states, you'll need to wait until the clients are upgraded before you can update the template to mail85.ntf. Finally, DAOS is not just for mail databases. I have also sensed some confusion around this. Of course, in most environments, the mail store is where most databases would have duplicate attachments (either internal or shared) and most of DAOS's storage and i/o savings has been revolved around mail files.

Hopefully this helps!