note to self...

When moving an existing Domino server from one piece of hardware to another, be sure to disable or deactivate the old IP. It saves you lots of time tearing your hair out because the connectivity is sporadic. :-p

Notes MU Migrator download - CORRECTED LINKS

Here's the minimal version with just the EXE and the INI files:

Notes Migrator - 05 - minimal.zip

If you want the documentation, which is pretty sparse at the moment, you can get it here:

Notes Migrator 05.doc

Sorry about messing that up earlier, the link with the source code is disabled now. I'm working on a UI to configure the application INI, as well as adding more additional debugging and logging. That should be up by the end of the week.

Notes MU Migrator 0.5 available

[UPDATE 27-3-2012] - IBM now has an officially supported tool: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21459627.

This is a utility that will take multiple single user installs and migrate them to a multi-user install. The general premise is that each user's Notes data directory is stored on his/her home drive (such as h:) and this will move the files to the appropriate %UserProfile% folders to make it work with the multi-user installation. I did this specifically for our own Windows Terminal Services servers, but there is no reason this shouldn't work for shared workstations, too. Just as long as Notes was originally set up a single user installation and each user had their data directory stored elsewhere, this should make it easier to migrate them to a multi-user install.

Here is the [EDIT - link removed 11/28/06]
Here are the VB5 runtimes if you need them.

I have tested this in my own environment and it worked well, but your mileage may vary. If you get any errors or need any help either post a comment or e-mail me and I'll do my best to help. Also if there are any features you would like to see added let me know. If there is enough interest I would also be willing to release the source code.

Rod Boothby - Updated Simple Recipe to Get Off Lotus Notes

Here are Rod's latest thoughts on a subject I was sure he would have grown tired of by now:

Updated Simple Recipe to Get Off Lotus Notes

1. Screen scrape all static content. You could use some Notes APIs, but why bother finding someone who learnt Notes back when it came out in 1984?
2. Have end users rebuild all your Notes based applications using QED Wiki, or something similar, such as Teqlo.

Step one might be even easier if your Notes team has set up standard compliant feeds, such as RSS or ATOM for your static content. With a system such as iUpload, Blogtronix, Suite Two or Atlassian's Confluence, it is a small coding exercise to bring your existing content into a new system.

Nope, he still doesn't get it. I would write him off if he weren't in a position where he influences so many decision makers.

In response to Rod Boothby's simplistic assertions

Rod Boothby recently posted a blog entry about how simple it is to migrate a Notes application to a "Web 2.0" paradigm. He was thoroughly trounced, so he tried again. And had various body parts handed back.

First he suggested screen scraping Domino data out of HTML. Crude, but effective... but then what? Ripping data out of Domino is easy. The hard part is getting the business logic, the workflow, and the other eleventy billion bits to translate to another platform. Furthermore, Rod is proposing doing everything on the WEB! Rod, I suggest you talk to real users, not management types. I know people who have quit jobs because tools they used were moved to web-based apps. Users hate them, with a passion.

In my experience Rod's so-called "innovation creators" and "knowledge workers" accept that what they use at home or for personal use is not appropriate for them getting their work done. Rod goes on to suggest that end users should be responsible for making changes to applications on the fly. If users are tweaking apps who is doing their real job? I agree that users need to be involved in the design process, but the answer isn't to give them a completely open tool with little structure and tell them to design what they need. It is possible, even with Notes, to deliver a structured system based on user input and feedback, that is extensible and flexible.

Just who is Rod Boothby, you might ask? He's a management consultant for Ernst & Young. His only exposure to Notes has been as an end user. Somehow in his mind that makes him an expert on the Domino platform and what it takes to implement new solutions as well as migrate away from it. I must not be as smart as him because I've not been able to do it. Read my blog, you'll see that I've tried and failed. I guess all the people Microsoft put on their Red Bull initiative must be likewise untalented. It sounds like Mr. Boothby has struck a goldmine since he's the only one capable of doing this.

Actually I think he's a crackpot. If his proposition weren't so absurd he might even be dangerous. As it stands, I think the following from Despair.com is fitting:

Migrating Windows XP 64 to a new drive

Due to budget constraints when I built my new computer I used the old 60GB EIDE drive I had. Recently I upgraded to a new 320GB Seagate ST3320620AS SATA2 drive. This is pretty state of the art and uses perpendicular storage technology. Previously whenever I have done anything like this I just reinstalled OS and all the software, then migrated over all the data. The last time it took me a few days to get everything working properly but I decided that since this was a newly built PC I could save myself some time and frustration by just moving everything from the old drive to the new one. I've never done this on a home computer before, or on a 64-bit OS, and it proved to be more difficult than I would have thought.

I use Ghost all the time at work, so I brought home some Ghost floppy disks. Then I realized I don't have a floppy drive in my case. No problem, I thought, I'll just open the case and connect a floppy drive to the motherboard. After rounding up the drive and cable and cracking open the case I realized my power supply doesn't even have a floppy drive power connector! Okay, so I'll go old school and boot from a CD, do a diskcopy, then update the partition tables. I couldn't get Nero 7 Ultra Edition to include extra files on a bootable CD, so no joy there. Many CD coasters, numerous software downloads and lots of Google searching later I stumbled across Acronis True Image Home.

I installed the 15 day trial version of True Image Home and ran the drive migration wizard. It was simply a matter of selecting my old drive, selecting the new one, and clicking OK. It automatically adjusted the boot partition on the new drive to take up the entire newer drive but you can do manual adjustments if you choose. You can also choose what you want it to do with the old drive. You can leave it alone, which is what I did, or have it repartition it for you.

After going through the wizard the computer rebooted, displayed the Windows XP boot screen, then started the migration in a strange CLI-looking window. I wandered off and about half an hour later when I came back the computer was shut down. I tried turning it on and it would just shut back off. Before I started I wondered what would happen since my EIDE drive still thought it was the boot drive and now the new SATA drive also had the same idea. With the computer off I opened the case, disconnected the old EIDE drive, started the computer and it booted from the SATA drive!

I'm one of those bad, bad people who don't do backups of my home computer so I don't have a need for Acronis True Image Home. If I did do backups, though, this is the product I would use. I do highly recommend it for doing migrations. It was incredibly simple considering everything else I tried. It all runs directly from the hard drive so you don't have to worry about making floppies or burning CD's, and other than the boot drive confusion it was pretty much idiot proof.

I also highly recommend the Seagate ST3320620AS drive. Be aware that it comes set up for SATA1 by default and you have to remove a tiny and difficult to reach jumper to enable SATA2. This is shown on a sticker on the top of the drive, but looking at the label is akin to reading instructions and who does that? The drive is amazingly fast and is the quietest drive I've ever worked with. Even running a defrag it's barely audible. I chose the Antec Aria case because is is extremely quiet and now that my hard drive is nearly silent I'm a very happy camper.

[Note that Acronis also offers Migrate Easy. Be aware that it does not support XP64. If you install Migrate Easy on a 32-bit OS it you can create a bootable CD, but you cannot do a disk to disk migration using the trial version's bootable CD. The full version does support that, and will allow you to migrate XP 64. Since I didn't have a 32-bit OS to install on I used the trial version of True Image Home instead.]

My first Windows XP 64-bit computer

I've always built my own computers, and in 2001 I put together an Athlon 1.1Ghz machine on an FIC AD11 motherboard. I put in a geForce 4 TI-4400 256MB video card and 512MB ECC PC2100 RAM. It has served me very well for the past five years. However I need more memory but can't find compatible modules, the fan on the video card died a few months ago and can't be replaced, and the 400W power supply is extremely loud and getting on my nerves. I also need a DVD drive but my current case is out of 5.25" bays. So I decided it was time to upgrade. This time I considered some pre-built computers, but to get the features I wanted was going to cost me over $1,200 and still not be exactly what I wanted:

Must haves:

• Quiet
• PCI-E 16X
• DDR2 support
  
• DVD±RW
• Upgradeable
  

Nice to haves:

• Small form factor
  
• Built-in card reader
• LightScribe DVD
  
• 64-bit
• Stylish
  

Based on that criteria, here's the component list I selected. I got all this for about $550:

• Antec Aria case
  
• Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard
• Sony DWQ-120A 16X Super All-Write DVD±RW
• AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Orleans)
  
• 2GB DDR2-533 RAM
• Windows XP Professional 64-bit
  

That's everything on my wish list except the LightScribe, which I honestly forgot about when I was selecting the components. I'm not sorry I got the Sony, it works perfectly and is fast and quiet. Whenever I decide that writing on my CD's and DVD's with a Sharpie isn't good enough I'll spend $40 on a new drive. Many small form factor cases, such as nearly everything by Shuttle, are not very upgradeable. You're stuck with the motherboard that comes in the case. The Antec Aria supports any micro-ATX board, so you can put whatever you want in it.

The Asus M2NPV-VM has 4 SATA2 ports, the most I found on any micro-ATX motherboard, and has pretty much everything built in: geForce graphics, gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 audio, support for up to DDR2-800, and support for Athlon FX2 CPU's. I started out mid-level and now I have a lot of headroom to upgrade into.

I purchased everything here except the Antec Aria case from Mwave.com. They have fair prices, an excellent selection, and are extremely easy to do business with. I have been ordering from them for years and never had any problems. The Aria is an older case and relatively hard to find. I got mine from eBay for about $60, not including shipping.

SNTT - iSeries to RHEL migration - Getting Domino Web Access to work

As I previously posted, moving Domino from one server platform to another is a relatively simple process: just install the same version of Domino then copy the entire Domino data directory from the old server to the new one. When you do this from an iSeries to RHEL you have to take into consideration that linux is case sensitive while the iSeries largely is not.

I ran into this after I moved my mail over and Domino Web Access wasn't working. After extensive troubleshooting I finally posted on Notes.Net and a helpful person there jogged my memory that led me down a path that yielded a resolution. A number of directories on the iSeries are in all upper case, but RHEL expects them to be lower case. Here's how I fixed it:

1. From the Domino console
   tell http quit
   
   
2. From the linux console (I was logged in as root but your notes user should work)
   cp -r /local/mail/domino/JAVA /local/mail/domino/java
   cp -r /local/mail/domino/TEMPLATES /local/mail/domino/templates
   cp -r /local/mail/domino/PLUGINS /local/mail/domino/plugins
   cp -r /local/mail/INOTES /local/mail/iNotes
   
   chown -R notes:notes /local/mail (not needed if you're logged in as notes)
   
   rm -rf /local/mail/domino/JAVA
   rm -rf /local/mail/domino/TEMPLATES
   rm -rf /local/mail/domino/PLUGINS
   rm -rf /local/mail/iNotes
   
   
3. From the Domino console
   load http
   

In step 2 above you could use the mv command instead. I prefer to do it in two steps, copying and testing that it worked, then doing the remove separately.

SNTT

Why I'm migrating from an iSeries to Red Hat

I've taken a few lumps recently about my decision to move from Domino on an iSeries to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). My reasons for the migration are as follows:

• It is incredibly expensive. Just getting a baseline iSeries with a single CPU, 2GB RAM and 150GB storage is going to run you over $20K. In my case upgrading from 1GB RAM to 4GB and 5 drives to 8 drives was going to cost over $10K. This was in addition to the $40K we had already paid for the box.
  
  
• OS/400 an arcane beast and finding good information is extremely difficult. I have a cursory understanding of how it fits together, but after eight years working with it I'm still mostly clueless! It just runs, which is good, but when there are problems I haven't the foggiest idea where to go to figure out what is going on. I end up spending lots of time on the phone with IBM support. They're good, but I would really appreciate something a little more approachable with better documentation.
  
  
• Upgrading was a pain. Each release of Domino came with it a list of the patches you had to have on your iSeries, as well as what version of OS/400 you needed. Verifying the patches was a tedious process, installing new ones took even longer, and heaven forbid you actually had to get an OS upgrade to install Domino. Domino 7 requires i5/OS 5.3, which our iSeries won't support, so we could not upgrade to Domino 7.
  
  
• IBM doesn't seem to know what to do with the AS/400 / iSeries / System i5. They keep renaming, rebranding and remarketing it. The latest push has been to use the iSeries to run linux. I just don't see that IBM is really moving the platform forward.
  

A couple of things to keep in mind regarding my perceptions. First, I have taken no AS/400 or iSeries classes. That would address my lack of knowledge, but not the rest of the issues I described. Second, I don't have an IBM or Lotus business partner I work with regularly. I have worked with a few in the past and feel that I received incorrect or even downright wrong information from them. In my most recent experience purchasing a BladeCenter and IBM SAN solution the BP was basically a mouthpiece so I could get discounted pricing. Third, I don't speak to any IBM or Lotus representatives on a regular basis, unless you count Ed's and Alan's blogs.

The decision for the migration has been made, the new hardware has been purchased, and I'm in the process of doing my migration. This is just an explanation of the reasoning that led to the decision.

Migrating from iSeries to Red Hat - Part 1

Moving Domino from to a new hardware and OS platform takes careful planning and lots of testing. I have been working on this project for over a year and wanted to share the lessons I have learned along the way.

Currently I run five Domino partitions on an iSeries 270 Dedicated for Domino. Yes, that's one of the bumblebee boxes. I'm migrating to an IBM BladeCenter with a DS4300 SAN. We have two blades for Domino, with mail services on one and applications on another. I am debating installing a secondary Domino partition on each blade and using them for clustering, but that's another set of posts.

The first step in this process was to determine the best approach for moving things over. After extensive research and lots of testing with VMWare Workstation I decided on the following scenario:

1. Install the same version of Domino on RHEL that I have on the iSeries. In my case this is 6.5.4 FP3.
   
2. Create a folder in /local/ for each Domino partition
   
3. Create an IFS share on the iSeries for the root Domino folder (all my Domino partitions are installed in /NOTES/ on the iSeries)
4. Mount the share on linux and copy the files from the iSeries to linux
5. Adjust notes.ini to use the new path structure
   

Many people move Domino to new hardware in conjunction with an upgrade to a new version. Don't install a new version of Domino on the new hardware and try to copy everything over. That is difficult to do correctly unless you really know what you're doing. Using the two-step approach gives you the opportunity to create a known working installation before you do the upgrade to a new version.

That's the 50,000 foot view of where I'm headed. In upcoming posts I will cover installing RHEL and configuring it for Domino, installing Domino, configuring ODBCDirect database drivers, migrating servers, and tweaking applications so they work correctly. I expect to learn a lot throughout this process.

Domino migration - iSeries to Red Hat

We currently run Domino 6.5.4 FP3 on an iSeries 270. Several months ago we purchased an IBM BladeCenter with the idea of migrating the Domino servers to that. I have done lots of testing and I'm finally starting that process. I intend to blog about all the steps I take to get there, focusing heavily on the "gotchas" and things that I have to really dig to find.

Here's an overview of what I'll be doing:

• Moving Domino server named MAIL to its own blade
• Moving Domino servers named Intranet, Armstrong, and TranSouth to the same blade
• Use Internet Sites documents to service two websites from this second blade
• Use ODBC to connect to an iSeries DB2 server (not the same one currently running Domino)

On the surface it sounds relatively simple. In testing it has been a bit more difficult to get everything talking to each other. I'll be doing the MAIL move on Saturday, July 22nd. If that goes well I'll start the Intranet move, too.