Deploying IBM Lotus Notes 8 on citrix

The Notes 8 client comes with a price
on resources and presents its own challange to citrix

If you are notusing the latest version
of xenapp and ND8 you should upgrade now

Overview of the notes client features(?)

Overview of Citrix xenapp 5.0 key components

Client was baselined on a citrix server.
 CPU, Memory etc when one user operating on the Xenapp server.

Automated user benchmarking (increments
of 5)

Disk IO was a major bottleneck

10K RPM SCSI disks used in testing (Raid5).

Testing occured on 802.  Users
logged in – script acted

Win2K3 32bit – 2CPU dual core (4GB RAM)
was the low spec.  Then PAE was enabled and memory upped to 8GB RAM

Enabled Notes Sharedclass cache for
citrix allowed the multiple notes users on a citrix server to share some
of the java classess ensuring

Memory is the main bottleneck.  With
PAE enabled and 8GB ram, 55 users were capable concurrently

Published to desktop

David Marshak discusses the Unified communications
announcements

Sametime 8.5 to be released this year

radical improvement in the meeting client
toolset – web conferencing feature.

Meetings will be persistent  (can
be left, and rejoined over an indefinite period)

cebp – communication enabled business
processes

frame set work

My new MBP arrived finally on Friday.
 I will save the disastrous customer service story about the delivery
of the kit for another blog post.  I’m typing this from my 2.8Ghz
Dual Core 15 Inch MBP with 4GB RAM and 320Gb 7200 Sata drive.  At
the moment, I own the fastest MBP you can own.  Give it .. em.. a
week and Im sure someone will blog with 6GB RAM.  So, some thoughts:

The good

• It is "bite the back of your hand"
  beautiful to look at, let alone use.  Placing it in my office immediately
  made me want to tidy and redecorate.

• The new track pad is great to use but
  takes getting used to

• Although there is an additional graphics
  card, the built in one works fine for me.  Nothing I use the Mac for
  would require it.

• Open MBP.  Turn on.  Select
  migrate data.  Choose my Time Machine drive.  Go away for an
  hour.  Job Done.  Simple.

• It feels very solid.  Very strong.
   This Mac feels like it could take punishment.  Over the next
  few months, with 6 trips already booked, it will.

• It’s fast.  Very fast.  I
  can now run two VM’s at once easily which is just excellent.

• Battery life looks good.  Still
  cycling my battery so its not accurate yet.

The Bad

• The wifi card (airport) in the new MBP
  needs a patch.  Badly.  Wireless reception goes from bad, to
  awful, in areas that I should have strong signal.  This has been noted
  on other Mac sites aswell.

• I went for the 15 Inch model.  My
  black Macbook was 13 inch and I think I prefer that size.  Although
  I wanted the horsepower of the MBP it just feels too big.  I loved
  the portability and speed of the blackbook.  Feels like I have lost
  some of that with the Pro.  Although, my thoughts on that may change
  with travel.

• There new track pad is great to use
  but takes getting used to.  Yes.. its a good and a bad thing.

• If you use the fast graphics card, you
  need to restart your VM’s that are in suspend mode, or Fusion will not
  play nice.

Overall, I really like it, but I feel
more "attached" to my blackbook.  That laptop became the
first computer I ever owned that became a "cannot live without"
daily tool.  As it was a gift,
it won’t be sold.  Instead its going on extended loan to my brother.

Again, worth a post in itself.  Using
PAE on citrix (i.e. doubling the RAM to 8GB) and specific documentation,
you can run 40 notes standard clients on a citrix box.  Documentation
on how to do this is on the way, and it will be made easier in next versions
of the client code.

Dear Steve

You may of heard of Lotus Notes.  I
have been working with it for 12 years or so, and regardless of product
features, problems, bad times, or the good times, it has been very good
to me and to many of my customers.  Simply put, I’m also a macboy
(as are most of the Lotus bloggers these days).  Well, the iPhone2
has just come out, and once again we are disappointed with IBM and their
lack of support for the iPhone with Lotus Notes.  Ya see, Lotus notes
is an enterprise product, with many many many enterprise customers.  IBM
dont really "do" small companies… so you see Lotus Notes in
all the big boys.   I mean the 80K user base plus boys.   And
it is used for many things in these sites, but mostly mail and PIM stuff.
 Exactly the type of market that iPhone needs to get to.  I know
that Blackberry is used in most of these places, but most likely blackberry
will not put a client near the iPhone, as your base OS does not pass its
security requirements. You can only get push mail for one enterprise product…
MS exchange.  Here is where I have a theory.  

IBM wants to get a push mail client
for Lotus Notes

Apple will not play ball with them…
hmm……  Has MS put a condition on activesync integration – ONLY
MS exchange support?  Even for a limited period of time?

Well, this is not really a smart move
-

Thanks mr Duff

Bill, as ever, being Bill

http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/lotusphere-2007-session-ratings-are-in?opendocument

All (well almost all) of the bloggers allowed up on the stage for a photo shot after the closing session. A dinner, followed by a quick drink in Kimonos wrapped up the event for me. Off now to pack and start to head home in the morning. I have many more thoughts to post, which I hope to do tomorrow.

The last few days caught up last night… and I crashed at about 10pm. Of course, that meant I have been up since 4am. Today is busy. Worst Practices to begin with, then trying to catch Ed and Julian’s session on Selling Lotus Notes in your environment. After that, the scotsman and I will be peddling a boat in the race at 12.15pm.
If I survive that, I will be presenting on Clustering performance tuning with Kathleen at 1.30.
Then…. Speedgeeking this evening.
Then… the closing party and beer.

So, this is a shot of the BP104 room that I am in currently. We kick off in an hour or so, with the usual rowdy bunch. Cant wait!