Uh Clem's Admin World

I am now 60% complete on my client roll out.  This is a one month project to upgrade all users from their 7.x  Notes & DWA to 8.0.2.  The mix is about 1/3 full client and 2/3 DWA clients with under 1000 users in 16 cities.  I must say my rollout is going quite smoothly (knock on wood).

For the DWA upgrades it is a simple convert task that is scheduled on the server to run overnight.  I feed it a file that has a list of the mail files to be converted.  For the full clients I am using the upgrade by email feature built into the Domino directory.  I simply point them to the upgrade image on their local file server.  

I decided to roll out the 8.0.2 standard client using the notes.ini setting "enable_early_authentication=0" instead of the 8.0.2 CCH1.  There was no way to get users from 7.x to 8.0.2CCH1 in one step.

Issues So Far
The full client has had very few issues.  The biggest issue is slowness on laptops with only 512mb RAM, which we plan to address through various means.  Also when the new mail file design is replicated locally, the user may get some errors if they are accessing their local mail file while the design is replicating.

The DWA issues have been mostly about Sametime IM issues.  This is mainly due to the fact that by default DWA users will get the DWA Contact List which has very few IM features, and some bugs.   Instead I have switched the DWA users to use the Sametime Connect for Browsers, which is more stable and has more features (like group chat).   This setting is in the server config doc under the DWA tab in the "Instant Messaging" and disable "Prefer DWA8 Contact List".

I completed my last mail server upgrade just now.  Yes, I am brave enough to do it on a Friday!  So all mail servers are now Domino 8.0.2.  I still have my ST, QP, and BES servers to do, but the hard part is over.

Next week I start piloting the client upgrades and the DWA (iNotes) upgrades.  Fortunately 75% of my users are DWA users only.

I'm still waiting for the 8.0.2 "revised" client to be released that fixes the bugs I mentioned here.

The first production server upgrade is always the scariest.  You are told that the directory and other system databases are backward compatible, but for some reason you are never quite sure.

I upgraded my first production Domino server this week from 7.0.3 to 8.0.2.  I must say it went amazingly smooth.  I followed the recommendations in technote 1303385.  However I did take one other precautionary step.  I disabled the replication of the directory (names.nsf) to the other 7.x servers.  Once I got the first server (the admin server of course) up to 8.0.2 I then opened up replication of the directory to the 7.x servers one at a time.  I would let it replicate, then perform an updall on names.nsf on the 7.x server.   I waited an hour between each 7.x server and gradually let the 8.0.2 names.nsf out to each of the other 7.x servers.

This went smoothly on all the 7.x servers including a Sametime server, Quickr server, and BES server.  The only minor glitch was the typeahead in email addressing was a little confused on user machines for a little while, but it straightened itself out.   I'm not quite sure why this happened since I updated the view indexes right after replication.

Once again I give the upgrade process of a major release of Domino an "A".  It amazes me every time how smooth these upgrades go.

I hope to continue to blog my progress as I role out 8.0.2 to the rest of my servers and then to my users.  Stay tuned.  Feel free to contact me directly if you are getting ready to go to 8.x and need a little input from someone who has been there.

I loaded 8.0.2 on my laptop yesterday.  The upgrade went smoothly although I'm still amazed it takes 10 minutes and the progress bar goes across like 50 times.

I'm having a small issue with the integrated Sametime.  I'm noticing that the floating ST buddy list window (as in the R7 client) keeps loading.  The integrated version also is connecting.

I'm getting the following error in the status bar:

You cannot use IBM Workplace instant messaging because Notes is already logged on to the IBM Lotus Sametime server.

What?  "IBM Workplace instant messaging"??  Hey IBM,  I think you need to scrub your error messages a little better.

Anyway,  my upgrade was from 8.0.1, but I also noticed the old, floating buddy list window is still popping up on upgrades from 7.0.3.

I have my first Domino 8 server upgrade (from 7.0.3) scheduled for next week.   I have been planning to use 8.0.1, but now I hear that 8.0.2 might be out in the next couple of days.  I am considering just using 8.0.2, but one of my co-workers asked me if I'm crazy.

In the past I have waited at least 30 days after a point release to put it in production.   So why has my thinking changed?  Have I been lulled into a false sense of security with ND point releases?  The last point release that I remember being a disaster was 5.0.3, which has been, like, 7 years.

How fast are you planning to put 8.0.2 into production?

 

So I upgraded our production Sametime server from 7.0 to 8.0 this past weekend.  It went amazingly smooth.   Our 800 Sametime users use a variety of methods to access the IM.  75% use either DWA or Portal IM portlets to access.  The other 25% use either a Notes 7 (soon to be 8) client, or Sametime for Blackberry.  So I had many different clients to consider during the upgrade.  I also had Quickr integration to deal with.

Here are the key lessons I learned.  Maybe others can benefit from them:

• Don’t rely soley on your own PC for testing.  As an administrator, you probably don’t have a standard configuration.  In my case I had a version of Java (1.0.6.2) that would not show awareness status in webmail.   Other users were active and were able to confirm it was working properly.  Once I reverted to Java 1.0.5.11 on my PC I was fine.

• Review the default Sametime policies.  I was not getting the “file send” feature in the Notes 8 client.  There is a ST policy called “Allow all Sametime Connect features to be used with integrated clients”.  This was turned off by default.  By the way, if you change the policies you don’t have to restart the entire ST server.  Just restart the “stpolicy.exe” service.

• It seems they will be supporting less features in DWA8 as they did in DWA7.  Features like “Who can see me online” are removed in DWA8.

• Sametime 8 handles user privacy info differently.  This is the “Who can see me online” info for each user.  You have to run a little utility (upgrade_util.cmd) included in the upgrade to convert the user privacy info.  This was actually changed in ST 7.5.1, but I was upgrading from 7.0.

The supported list of webcams only has 3 webcams on it.  These are the 3 webcams that development actually tested.  However IBM tech support did say that any quality USB webcam that supports 640x480 and 30 frames per second should work. 

Feel free to contact me if you want more information about my upgrade experience.