Domain Monitoring and Domino R7

Yes, if you don't use it, you are missing out. But if you do use it, well, you may never have a minute of free time!
My client thankfully after my brief 4 months here is humming along perfectly happy.
Before I came in to remotely handle the admin and management:
1- Servers would fail especially the HUB and stay down until someone took care of it
2- dozens of dead mail sat in the mail.box's on every server
3- mail routing was enabled from any server to the SMTP gateway(good but highly unsecure)
4- servers runnning R5, R6 and R7 and in some cases using R4 templates for mail
5- 4 different NAB/Directories from 4 different previous owners populated the servers, still, some 10 years after the fact
6- Servers were not under warranty and of course one primary failed
7- termination lists had not been kept up to date so 100's of "dead' users were stil live
8- No stats or events or monitoring running
9- Servers did not notify admins when they failed or had issues connecting
10- Some server IP and DNS names did not match the server docs! No wonder some people never got their email here :-)

Well you get the idea.

Having fixed all of this, I used the Domain monitoring to check on everything. And it really likes to tell me all about the attempts to connect to the HUB by everyone, if i toss all of those, I probably have it down to 1 incident of consequence every day or 2 and that is usually warnings that the network is slow (I love when I get heckled by computers don't you?)

Looking forward to new tools at the Sphere so if you are a vendor with some admin tools I should know about, please let me know.

Direction Changes

While I wanted this to be about Domino administration, I find that I am not really drawn to write about the trials and tribulations found among us firemen.
Instead I want to devote my time to remote admin and outsourcing of it for Domino infrastrcutures.
Why?
Because while many of you out there outsource your admin already, few of you have some one who really understands what is going on and managing the future of your network.
Call it high consulting, top tier admin, expert on call, whatever the description, ask yourself this about your environment:
Is our environment healthy?
How would we know?
Do we need more or less servers?
Why do we still run R5 or R6 templates when we have an R7 server?
Do we have alternative routing setup in case of SMTP or gateway failures?
Unified messaging, it has been around for Domino since 1999 or earlier, when will you implement it?
Legal audit? When was the last time you pulled a backup tape from 5+ years ago and verfified the data was intact and usable?

If any or all of these are in question let me know and we can discuss it, or meet me at Lotusphere at my BoF session for more information.
Happy New Year!

IBM Marketing and I, er You?

If you have been reading Ed brills blog you will have seen the recent discussion about IBM marketing and the perennial "Lotus is Dead" rumor out of Redmond.

While I will not sit and argue that IBM does or doesn't get marketing and advertising, I will post an example of something so basic, yet profound that I received from IBM after downloading a white paper or reading a tech article on Sametime.

On the plus side, it shows an active IBM trying to engage its potential customers. Something many of us think does not exist. It also highlights what you were looking at and how to get help. By the way he did include all of his contact information, phone, email, address, etc.

The down side is the text and bad form letter formatting. This does not make me want to interact with you, it just makes me feel like you have been spying on me(I know it was IBM's website and they should be tracking all visitor's, I am just saying how I would feel as a non-techy).
Specific examples of why Sametime or IM would benefit someone, around the clock availability of someone someplace to fix something. Costs saved or a local BP to talk to would be helpful or even a local reference or even just a link to a reference?

Nope just bad adcopy. Shame, it really is.


"Hello Mr. Brooks:

I recently noticed that you expressed interest in our IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5 instant messaging solution. Our main objective is to get your questions answered and meet your business needs. We have actually been doing some innovative and creative things here at IBM to increase efficiency, grow revenue and reduce costs for businesses in your sector. In order to serve your needs and find what you are looking for, please call me and I will provide you with the resources for any IBM solutions. Look forward to hearing from you. Thank you Brooks.

Please feel free to contact me at the number and extension below.

Regards,

Lead Generation Representative - Software"

Job Wanted, Contract ending

An excellent way to start your day, high off my fantasy football win to find out my contract is done, Jan 15. Couldn't even get me to Lotusphere could they.
Well anyway I am available for remote work or if you can afford it onsite consulting.
Let me know your need and we can work something out.
Otherwise I will be sitting at the Swan with a Lotus Notes empty cardboard box collecting change.

Finals in Fantasy Football

Not my usual thing, but I somehow managed to pull a win in my playoffs and made it to the final round in fantasy football.
I want to thank Marvin Harrison, ex-UM and current Colt for his great showing last night.
Just go to beat the guy with Ladanian.

from the connector readme for the dec7 version

As a Lotus admin for many years, this is just painful to wait for an update, but MS seems to be on an as need basis for updates.

Anyway here's the info:
There are several updates to support better message fidelity when routing between Exchange and Domino, enhanced Unicode support and reliability. The following information is about the updated features.

Better content handling from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Domino:
By default, Exchange e-mail messages remain in HTML/MIME format when transferred to Domino and maintain all formatting.
HELLO MS, SHOULDN'T THIS HAVE BEEN DONE FIRST?

Better content handling from Lotus Domino to Microsoft Exchange:
By default, messages created by a Lotus Notes client are in the Notes proprietary CD format and are converted to Rich Text Format (RTF) when transferred to Exchange. Lotus Notes messages that are formatted HTML will remain in the HTML/MIME format when transferred to Exchange and maintain all formatting.

iNotes/Domino Web Access messages are formatted HTML by default, remain in HTML/MIME format when transferred to Exchange and maintain all formatting.

The Microsoft Outlook Connector and the Outlook client for Domino mail can be configured to format messages HTML and then will remain in HTML/MIME format when transferred to Exchange and maintain all formatting.

Unicode is supported for co-existence and migration.

iNotes/Domino Web Access is a supported client during co-existence.

Lotus Notes 6.x is supported on Windows Server 2003 for the Exchange Connector, Calendar Connector and Migration Wizard for Lotus Notes tools.
AND RELEASE 7.X?

Microsoft Exchange Connector for Lotus

Let's talk for a minute about this invention.
A gateway by any other name, this is from MS and is one of the ways to share messaging between Notes mail and Exchange.
An excellent idea by MS to "work with" their clients to assist in migrations.
The problem is when it is being used full time perpetually.
Dec 7, MS released version 6.05.7879 of this connector.
Hopefully some of the hotfixes MS lists in their knowledge base are wrapped up in this.
Well just have to wait and see.
In the mean time I would like to see my Dutch users stop crashign my hub everytime they mail someone in Notes from outlook.

BoF topic in more detail

Well as you can see it will be a VERY early morning for all of us. Especially after the night before. Carl Tyler was right :-)

Swan Heron room, seats 20-45, so maybe SRO will occur.

Remote admin, outsourced admin, good or bad, right or wrong, we will get to the bottom of it.

I do it, and have done it for others for years, but it usually is met with fears, doubts, costs.
You outsource your development, because you aren't afraid of backdoors?
You outsource your development, because you don't think they can get the project done on time or under budget?
You outsource your development to save money. Well maybe this one works.

And the same can be said for admin.
Maybe you need a night admin because your day staff is too busy?
Perhaps having an experienced admin handling outsourced higher level issues is required?
What if security was an issue, how could you do the outsourcing? VPN or locked down laptops are common.
Maybe you are in the middle of nowhere and relocation is not useful or there is no great crop of experienced people willing to work for under $40K with 5 years of experience. I am not saying this is low pay because for some people it is higher than they earn, but do you want to trust your security and intellectual property to someone who meets this requirement?
If your servers are in a data center/NOC some place remote from your admin, why do you make your admin go to the office? Why not outsource the remote admin already?
What is the value to you, $3,000, $5,000, $7,500, $10,000 a month?
In return what can you receive? Less downtime, quicker resolution of non-hardware issues, proactive monitoring and enhancements, cleaner NAB/Directory, more efficient leverage of your network resources, consolidation of servers, migrations to newer versions(7.0.2), training other admin.
Now look at your staff, can they do that, have they done it?
Everything I listed just now I did for my client or am finishing and the total time required is about 3-4 months(mixed environment, 3,500 users, 10-15 servers).
How's your staff?

My Birds of a Feather Session Details

Now You See Admin, Now You Don't
Lotusphere Session Details

Session ID: BOF310
Session Track(s): BOF - Track Three: Planning and Managing your Collaboration Infrastructure

Speaker Name: Keith Brooks
Speaker Company: Vanessa Brooks, Inc.
Session Abstract: What if you could manage your network remotely -- would you? Why should you? When would it help? Do you need a night administrator so you can sleep
better? Let's explore the options and see how to save money while increasing
your security.

Session Date: 01/23/2007
Session Time: 07:00am - 8:00am
Session Location: SW Heron

BoF vs. Track Sessions

I always thought BoF were more about the real world activities of clients, compared to say the product manager view of the world found in session tracks.
Having not been in Lotusphere for 1 or 2 years I expect to see many old freinds and meet some new ones and some people in person I only get to read about or email.
For the Lotus staff, hopefully someone can provide me some insights to get a session track next year over some drinks.
Better to be recognized than not.
But with the family in tow my time will be stretched anyway in Orlando.
See you at the Swan.

"Birds of a Feather" at Lotusphere '07 a gift from my Peers

Cool news, some of you and others in the Yellow world have voted my BoF session be included at Lotusphere 2007.
I'd like to thank everyone who voted for it even if it was only my friends ;-0.

The topic is Now You See Admin, Now You Don't!
I am not sure completely what i wrote about the abstract but it probably was the one dealing with remote admin(outsourcing) or how not to let others manage your network for you without some guidelines. But since everyone voted and it was selected presumably I hit a point of contention.
Well that or only 2 other people submitted sessions which is unlikely given how many were submitted overall according to Ed Brilland the emails I received from Lotus.
Either way, I am sure some input will come from Lotus and other people along the way. So please inquire and let me know your thoughts.
I guess I have to dust off the old Lotus presenter shirt, black button down with a lotus logo by the pocket.

Domino Admin Blogs, Where are they?

Now maybe I'm being simplistic, but are there any blogs dedicated to Domino admin or SMTP or routing or any of the infrastructure aspects of Domino which DO NOT involve appdev?
Maybe us Lotus Managers, Administrators, Architects feel like Rodney Dangerfield, we don't get no respect.
So any ideas?
Ed Brill pointed me to Susan Bulloch's www.notesgoddess.net
Anyone?

Domino SMTP Routing vs. Notes Native Routing

The solution works but the problem remains.
Why does lotuscript not perform lookups the same way as @functions for the purpose of email routing?
In theory they should work the same, but that is not the case, at least in R6 and R7.
If I send an email to the 'net or internal people it routes fine from a notes client.
if i do the same from the webclient, it works as well.
If I try it from a purposeful built web app in Domino it fails at the Notes routing level.
Someone with a better appdev view might help me understand this sometime.
Why don't all "send mail" actions work the same way? This seems illogical to me for something so significant.

Domino Administrator/Manager Blogs, Where are you?

Where are the real managers of the network? If you manage or have managed a Domino network, or a Notes network for those of us who have been around since before Domino was born, what issues do you see still today? Are you blogging it?

I see the same ones as I saw years ago.

Basic issues:
Person doc entries incorrect(names or domains or emails or duplicates), basic flaw but pervasively causes 90% of all mailbox problems and in some cases server failures. Usually this is caused by turnover in jr. admins over time.

Connection docs that make no sense or have incorrect IP addresses. Check your logs for this issue.

Server crashes at night same time or close to it - usually an Agent is at fault but maybe an index needs to be recreated.

One user "sees" data, another doesn't - template issues, ensure proper propagation of standard versions. Sometimes related to different versions of clients running 6.5.3 vs. 6.5.5.

Also make sure you have 2 things set up from day one. Server automatic restart on the first tab of the server doc. and notification to you via email or however you want it, when the server fails and restarts.

Mail Routing and No Option?

Mail routing mimics the real world. As long as there is a proper address, the mail, in theory, arrives at its destination.
Like the real world, bad addressing either gets returned to sender or ends up in the Dead Letter Office or in Domino, the mail.box.
When the mail.box starts getting full of bad emails, all mail stops.
This is NOT like the real world.
And so it happens under R7.0.1 FP1(some say all of R7). As soon as we start getting incorrect mail stuck in the mail.box it crashes the server.
How very disturbing.
Now what?
From forum discussions going to 7.0.2 will not fix this. So I am left to go backwards or face a failing server every day?
What about my SLAs?

Web 2.0 is it doomed?

Is there a difference? Do companies really think differently than consumers?
No.
But do consumers want to have workflow, or approval for posted documents?
Maybe.
Can Web 2.0 provide this?
Maybe, maybe not.

Schools come to mind as a primary target of this problem.

My kids and others in the nation, require signed parental approvals for different events, from pictures to field trips to sports teams to donations.
Now having us email the school our approval is not a secure way to do this, mostly because our kids can sppof emails as easily as the next one.
Do we have a keyring from Verisign with crypto code to enter to validate us?
Do we get issued a digital ID?
Nope.
So how do we get around this problem?
Schools don't have the infrastructure or money to hire devlopers for this and maybe someone like Google or IBM or Microsoft wants to take a look at this.
How many of us intercepted letters from teachers or principals sent home about behavior, grades, truancy? Now how do you think your kids do it today?
Spam blockers, simple mail rule agents :-)
Maybe you should take a look at your mail client.
Companies want to encourage interaction(if you work for one who doesn't my condolences and hope you get out soon) but not without tracking, security and backup because at any time they can be sued or need to bring it all back up, something which is not always available in the Web 2.0 world.

Lose the War, Win the Battle?

Many times over the years I saw this happen. We would convince a client to take Lotus only to be hung out to dry during the next regime.
Perhaps Lotus should get out to the CIO/CTO conferences that ARE NOT sponsored by IBM and sit on a panel or get some speaking time.
The battle is won at lower levels easily but rarely at higher ones as easily when it comes to Lotus vs. MS or anyone else. Why is that?

The Little Green Men(LGMs or Aliens) in Toy Story have a Unimind. Why can't we portray Domino as providing that to clients employees?
If you need everyone on the same page, it helps to have a software that can mix and match as your company grows?

R7, R8? But we are till on R4!

It's an odd bit of news perhaps to Lotus and my friend Ed Brill, but there is a boom in Notes admin positions lately.
Moving to R7 you think? Hell no!
These companies are plodding along and want to upgrade.....to R6!
Now you can say well you see Lotus built a VW and R4.5 can last forever.

So as we run up to Lotusphere 2007, how many companies out there still have R4 or R5 servers? And why have they not upgraded yet? We want to help you upgrade, but you need to take the first step.

That's Just What I Would Do

If I ran the zoo. To paraphrase a Dr. Seuss book.
But what would you do if you ran the zoo known as IBM/Lotus marketing?

At this point Lotus has come back from the brink of death and comes out swinging (the boxing gloves advertising campaign) but at who or what? Some people might say at customers. "Take Websphere or we will knock you out!"
The truth be told IBM has rarely had excellent advertising campaigns so we can't fault them on this one either. The "magic dust" was great, because that is so exactly the point. Every application is magic, created by hundreds if not thousands of developers. Disney should get into this, they would be perfect.
Maybe IBM can partner with Disney to handle some marketing/advertising.

Seriously, if I ran the shop what would I want to do or see?

For a start Lotus Notes 8 is old news naming, get modern, let people at least think there is a new release, not that Lotus 2007 is a genius idea, but at least it seems up to date. Maybe go with Domin8 for domino version 8?

Retro doesn't work in Software like on automobiles or clothing, well some clothing.
But, if Notes.net still existed(bring it back you fools!) perhaps it could be set up so people could look at the path Notes took as a client from 1.0 to today.
The changes have been good for the most part, but yoou know there is no convincing those who last saw it in R4 or R3.

Apps should be used for publicity. Too late now, but setting up a fantasy football draft template would be useful and perhaps get people to try it out via a web enabled db. Can we get this done for the next baseball fantasy league? Or Soccer (football to my EU friends)?

ok got ot go fix a dns

The Lotus years

Now before you get all jumpy, let's try to remember this was when Lotus 1-2-3 was king of the hill, bless Iris Asociates.
So when Lotus Notes 1.0/2.0 came out, sure people wanted to try it. But it was a failure of a flat database at first. BUT it did one thing really well.
Email
I was blown away, here was a program I was dreaming about, one which could talk to ther people in the building or around the world. It was beautiful and then came V3.3 which really got to working the way it should.
I immediately decided being a consultant would suck if I didn't learn everything about this great product. I tried many times to get a job with Lotus/Iris but they wouldn't answer my pleas to let me into the sacred sanctum.

Back when Ray Ozzie was a genius, well he still is relative to many people, and Microsoft and IBM were still doing DOS and supposedly doing OS/2 I thought I could get in there, but no dice. Oddly enough years later Groove wouldn't hire me either, evidently Floridians just don't work for Ozzie and his staff. But I did make it to Lotus, MANY years later.

History first?

Well I am not one to dwell on it, but my career started when Windows 2.0 came out.
Ah the funny little program which came with a mouse and MS paint program.
What do you do with it? Nothing, until windows 3.0.
But this is not about Windows.
This is about the early days of the IT world when anyone who knew how to turn a computer on was a consultant(circa 1989-1990). Did well, not even 21 and making 40K a year which was a great deal to me as my buddies who followed through on our accounting degrees barely made 30K.
I remember the first 486 when it came in. It dropped processing time to 8 hours overnight from almost 20 on a 386. Yes science advanced so fast. Now we measure the change in seconds or minutes. Maybe my smartphone in hours, even that is better than my old 486.

In the beginning

like many others it was so simple, you want a new job, you find a new job.
But that was before 9/11.
Since then it has been a up and down ride.
Being an entrepreneur has its advantages.
Started a company, found a line of business, started making money.
Just as we were going to go big in the 2nd year(looking at $3 millionin sales) the supplier dropped us.
Damn if we weren't dong 2-3% of their total sales in $$ but did they care? nope.
Once again proving working for yourself is the best way to work.

You never know

till you try, so like many others I am trying the blogosphere.