Archive for General Admin
Compuware ServerVantage and Lotus Domino
Working on this product at the moment and finding it very problematic. It seems to use the Windows Performance Monitor bolt on (part of a custom domino install) to get its stats. The main issue lies with the configuration of the product with domino.. as it seems to not "see" the domino server unless you really muck around with your build. Has anyone done any work on this product in the past? Any comments on this in production?
Question on ServerTransInfoRange
Considering turning this into a SNTT post in the next few weeks as many people/sites do not understand the newer Server Availability Index and TransInfoRange setting. In order to get useful results from SAI recently on new servers, I had to raise the TransInfoRange setting as high as 25. If you have it configured, have you ever had to configure it with that value?
An ND7.02 feature I was not aware of
This is good – and will come in useful
(taken from release notes)
When you address a mail message, Notes
can now look into the server address book first, instead of the user’s
personal address book. To use this feature, choose ‘Server then Local’
in the "Mail addressing" field shown below. Note that this
field is only visible if your mail file location is set to "Local".
IBM is investigating having this feature available for Server-based
mail files in a future release.
Server on ND7.02 now!
Managed to download and install the ND7.02 software this evening. The upgrade process was a breeze, as you would expect. Only issue was the domino server was removed from the services panel. In order to return the Lotus Domino Server entry in the services listing, I just had to follow the old fashioned method.
1. Open a DOS prompt
2. Go to the x:\lotus\domino directory
3. Type in "NTSVINST -C" and press return
Then its back. Just set it to automatic. Aside from that I did get an error on my mail file "Cache entry not found" when trying to access my server mail. That was caused by me using a *cough* slightly "newer/not even beta yet" version then ND7.02 as my design template. So I cannot really throw stones at the upgrade for that now can I?
An example of production server uptime….
Photo taken from a site I was on today.
Excuse the poor quality (taken with my HTC Wizard phone), but 240
days up would get my "solid" approval.
Microsoft Application Analyser 2003 for Lotus Notes
Recently, I had to endure a meeting
where I was "told" how "easy" it is to migrate from
Domino to MS Exchange… "Yes", I agreed, "but, ahem,
if you take into account that you lose a lot of security, fidelity, scalability
and functionality , there is one, other small problem. You have 50
applications. What do you want to do with them?"
Well guys, I’m wrong. Apparently,
its easy to migrate them aswell. Microsoft even supply you with a
tool to evaluate how difficult it would be to migrate your application
out of Lotus Notes to an MS platform. This has been tried before,
and never EVER worked (don’t even get me started on the Lotus Notes email
connector for Exchange, but that’s a different story). But, as I
have an open mind, I was willing to take a look at the Microsoft
Application Analyser for Lotus Notes.
First of all, what does it do?
"The Microsoft® Application
Analyser for Lotus Notes – Data Collector User’s Guide describes
how to operate the Data Collector program. You can use the Data Collector
to collect data about IBM Lotus Notes applications. This data can be used
by Microsoft Consulting Services or a Microsoft Certified Partner to generate
in-depth reports about Notes applications and to develop migration strategy.
The Data Collector also generates an Executive Summary Report about the
selected Lotus Notes applications."
Ok, it gives me a summary report telling
me how difficult it would be to migrate my Lotus Notes application to the
MS platform. Fair enough? I decided to run it against a few
applications of my own…..
Supported Browsers for ND7
Just an FYI to all, the supported browser list for DWA off ND7.x server
- Win32 Internet Explorer 6.0
- Mozilla 1.4.1 and 1.7.x (Linux clients
only) - Mozilla Firefox 1.0 on Win32 and Linux
(supported by the DWA7 mail template only; not supported by iNotes6 templates)
Has
anybody done a functionality test with IE5.5?
Question on Mail rules over multiple servers
Hoping one of ye has come across this
before. I have an ND6.5x environment. Multiple servers, multiple
clusters. All works very well. They want to implement rules
to block mails with specific attachments. For example, anything with
.exe gets its status changed to "held". Ok? Grand…
All is well there…
BUT
The same rules are to exist on all servers.
From what I can see and test, this means that the message gets re-held
on every server until it reaches its destination. Is there any way
I can prevent this from happening?
Ok, I can use the custom Mail rules
feature and add some code, and tie that in with a special "release"
button in the mail.box files. This would add a special $ruleexempt
field to the emails and the mail rules will leave that message alone.
Simply, I don’t want to do that unless I have to. This has to be
maintained with upgrades and template changes etc.
Any suggestions?


