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.