The incredible backward compatability of the Domino platform
Mon, May 13th 2013 9:12a Alan Forbes In the course of facilitating an evaluation with a potential customer, we performed a ‘findings review’ where we walked the customer through the potential issues that VitalSigns had discovered. One thing was a surprise for us, and I’ll let you look at the screen shot to enjoy it yourself. Domino never ceases to amaze me. (Hint – look at the Domino Version column to see what this guy still has running -successfully — in production.) [read] Keywords: domino
R5
I’m not in Orlando yet, but my mugs are…
Tue, Jan 15th 2013 1:15p Alan Forbes In less than two weeks I’ll be in Orlando for the annual Lotusphere/IBM Connect show. Even though I am not there yet, my mugs are already enjoying the Florida sunshine.
Did you suggest a feature that got added to VitalSigns? If so, you’re eligible for one of these highly-coveted mugs. Just come by and see me at Pedestal B-55. [read] Keywords: ibm
lotusphere
VitalSigns 10.33 is here
Fri, Oct 26th 2012 12:09p Alan Forbes There are many new features that have been added in the latest release. One nice obvious feature which was suggested by a prospective customer makes it very easy to see if Alerts are turned on or off by adding an indicator on the status bar.
There are also many enhancements that are “under the hood”, and related to scaling. We have several customers with more than 100 servers and we have made dozens of optimizations to the cycle speed to accommodate so many servers. If [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
server
181
Applied the jQuery Mobile Framework to VitalStatus OnTheGo
Fri, Aug 3rd 2012 1:12p Alan Forbes We’ve been poking around with jQuery, which happens to play nice with Domino, and we decided to use it to spice up the mobile edition of VitalStatus. With just a couple of hours of work, we got some really nice affects that those of you with Apple and Android devices are sure to love. You can see it live here -> http://www.rprwyatt.com/vs/vitalstatus.nsf/OnTheGo?OpenPage [read] Keywords: domino
apple
mobile
Working on the next generation dashboard
Mon, Jun 11th 2012 4:17p Alan Forbes This week, I’ll be in our New Jersey office brainstorming with colleagues about the next-generation dashboard for VitalSigns. Is there something you wish the product had? Please let us know! [read] Keywords: office
173
Please update to 10.27
Fri, May 25th 2012 12:11p Alan Forbes Hi all,
If you are running VitalSigns 10.23 to 10.26, then please update to the most recent 10.27. 10.27 fixes a number of important items, for instance if your scheduled report have been arriving without any data in them, then this update should take care of it. [read] Keywords:
Fine Tuning Alerts
Tue, May 1st 2012 8:10a Alan Forbes At the request of one of our larger customers, we’ve added a new option to the Alert Definitions. Now you can specify which servers an alert will apply to. For example, you can define an alert for “West Coast Admins” then check off all the servers that group is responsible for. If one of those servers has an issue, the alert will go to them. If a server not on the list has the issue, that particular alert will be skipped. [read] Keywords: server
131
Server room meltdown prevented
Mon, Apr 9th 2012 6:11p Alan Forbes One of our customers had a near meltdown this weekend. Apparently the AC in the server room malfunctioned on Saturday afternoon resulting in hot air being vented into the server room. Shortly thereafter, the servers got so hot they began automatically shutting down.
Fortunately, the Domino servers were being monitored by VitalSigns, and we got an alert. We attempted to RDP to the servers, but no response. The on-call tech had to go in and see what was up, and he opened the server room to [read] Keywords: domino
server
104
Announcing VitalSigns 11
Thu, Mar 22nd 2012 9:11a Alan Forbes BLUG is off to a great start, with almost 300 attendees and speakers from 10 different countries…
We made an exciting announcement here and I thought I’d share with all of you. It isn’t quite done yet, but we’re using the opportunity of this major show in Europe to announce what’s coming in the latest VitalSigns. See the press release here.
Here’s the jist of it…. The release culminates a year of new features and enhancements based on customer reques [read] Keywords: lotus
traveler
microsoft
server
sql
89
See you at BLUG?
Fri, Mar 2nd 2012 11:12a Alan Forbes We are pleased to announce that Alan Forbes, RPR Wyatt Director of Product Development, will be presenting at the Belgium Lotus User Group (BLUG) in Antwerp, March 22nd and 23rd .
Alan will be presenting his latest findings on Maximizing Monitoring for Traveler. If you are going, please be sure to say hello. RPR Wyatt will also be represented at the NotesCode booth. [read] Keywords: lotus
traveler
development
155
Major enhancements to Lotus Traveler monitoring
Wed, Feb 29th 2012 1:13p Alan Forbes The upcoming major release of VitalSigns will have dramatically enhanced capabilities for monitoring Lotus Traveler. We’ve already started working on the web page describing it.
Officially, it is called “IBM® Lotus® Notes® Traveler software” but most of us just call it “Traveler”. Traveler provides mobile support for Lotus Notes and Web Access users with automatic, real-time replication of email, calendar, address book, journal, and to-do lists across mobile device p [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
traveler
apple
email
google
microsoft
mobile
102
Now access webadmin.nsf directly from VitalStatus
Tue, Feb 28th 2012 8:30a Alan Forbes Thanks to a suggestion from one of our customers, we’ve added a new feature to the VitalStatus database for browser users. Now as you are looking at Domino server details, there is a new tab called “Web Admin” .
Clicking this tab will launch the web admin client for that server in an iframe within the Web Admin tab. Of course, you have to be authorized to use web admin for this to work, as we never bypass Domino security.
Here’s a screenshot to give you the idea. [read] Keywords: admin
domino
database
security
server
101
How to deploy company logo in traveler website home page
Tue, Feb 28th 2012 8:16a Alan Forbes In preparation for presenting at the Belux Lotus User Group next month on Best Practices for Rolling out Lotus Traveler, I came across a neat tip I thought I’d share. It lets you put a company logo on the Lotus Traveler home page on your Traveler server.
1. Go to traveler server data directory (dominohtmltravelerImages)
2. Rename banner.jpg to Ibmbanner.jpg
3. Copy your company logo and rename to banner.jpg
4. Restart HTTP task or restart traveler server [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
traveler
mobile
server
69
A cautionary tale…
Thu, Feb 9th 2012 10:13a Alan Forbes One of our customers, who shall remain nameless, was under some pressure to cut “non-essentials” from his budget. Sound familiar?
So he reluctantly cut his monthly “RAPScan” agreement with us. For those who don’t know, RAPScan is a service whereby we install VitalSigns at customer site and the alerts go to us to take care of whatever the problem is. (Alerts go to the customer too if they want them, as most do.)
Less than two weeks later, a number of servers went dow [read] Keywords: admin
74
Improved Cluster Health
Fri, Jan 27th 2012 12:40p Alan Forbes We improved the Cluster Health tab. The quickest way to see these improvements is to watch a short shockwave demo . (No, it doesn’t have sound).
There are two big improvements.
1) Now the cluster names are color-coded so you can see at a glance which clusters have issues, just as the disk health is color-coded.
2) The other big improvement is that in addition to just seeing the current values of the cluster, we made it super simple to see how the cluster replicator has been perform [read] Keywords: lotusphere
consulting
server
81
At Lotusphere…
Tue, Jan 17th 2012 1:50p Alan Forbes We are all (Joe, Alan, Jim) here at Lotusphere, soaking up the opportunities to meet with many of you. Please come by our booth 605 if you are here.
Watch for some exciting improvements to VitalSigns in Cluster health and Traveler Health based on the latest best practices we have picked up at the Jumpstarts and sessions. [read] Keywords: lotusphere
traveler
mobile
65
Yet another number format :)
Tue, Dec 6th 2011 2:36p Alan Forbes A new customer recently told me that one just a few of his servers, the disk health wasn’t working as expected. I had him send me the disk stats and this is what I got:
Disk.C.Free = 5’075’542’016
Disk.C.Size = 12’872’527’872
Disk.C.Type = NTFS
Disk.D.Free = 267’671’977’984
Disk.D.Size = 1.1811090473E+12
Disk.D.Type = NTFS
Disk.E.Free = 31’114’084’352
Disk.E.Size = 38’650’556’416 [read] Keywords:
75
Domino Deep Dive is here
Tue, Nov 15th 2011 10:55a Alan Forbes A new option is now available on the Overall Health tab right-click menu. If a Domino server row is selected, a new option “Domino Deep Dive…” now shows. Clicking that brings a modal dialog box with lots of current information about the server and at a glance mini-charts that show how various metrics have varied over the day. [read] Keywords: domino
server
69
Improved Business Hours dialog
Tue, Nov 8th 2011 8:40a Alan Forbes We made it easier to configure and understand the settings for business hours. The nice thing is that it requires no typing.
Here’s the new dialog: [read] Keywords:
