Domino can take huge user populations. Do do this successful all elements of a Domino server have to be considered carefully. Following the old insight "It is always the cable" you need to pay attention to the hardware layout. While you perfectly well can install a Domino server on a low-end laptop or a VM Image, it wouldn't give you the peak performance you are looking for. You rather want something looking like this:
Let us look at the details:
Disk layout
Operating system and Applications: This is your first RAID 1 Array. Since data hardly change and are really not that much a small but fast spinning drive will do. RAID1 protects you against failure of one drive and speeds read operations. Some suggest to have separate drives for application and OS, but that might be overkill. You could consider having separate partitions (easy on Linux/Unix).
View Rebuild Directory: There is a nice notes.ini variable View_Rebuild_Dir. You can point to a separate drive to store the temporary files created during index updates. The default is the system temp directory. This directory is a good candidate for a RAM disk or a solid state disk when your system is updating a lot of views all the time.
Domino Data: Typically you have a RAID5/RAID10 storage here to accommodate the large amount of data (users demand Google size mailboxes and your applications don't shrink magically). More and more we do see SAN systems for Domino storage, which is OK. Just keep in mind: Don't store Domino cluster databases from different clusters in the same SAN since it defeats the idea of a share-nothing cluster. While we support the use of NAS, the network latency and bandwidth is a limiting factor. Archival servers run fine with NAS, but not your high performance primary production server.
Transaction Logging: You have tried it. Switched it on, expected great things and it didn't perform. The flaw: for good transaction logging performance you need your own disk. Not just another partition, but your very own spindle (RAID1) ideally with its own controller. It would be interesting to see how solid state disks work here.
Network layout
Cluster Replication (If you cluster your server only): You want to have your cluster on its own network segment. If you have 2 boxes next to each other a cross-over cable would do (afaik 1GB Ethernet requires a hub). If your go three-way (highly recommended), then a hub and an IP address segment that doesn't get routed will do.
Server Network: All servers should be connected on the server backbone. Put them into their own subnet clients can't see. Replication never gets disrupted by clients jamming the network ports. The server network also handles mail routing.
Client access: If you have huge numbers of clients you might reach the physical capability of your network card or the TCP/IP stack. Use more than one card and/or more than one IP address to have sufficient ports available for clients to connect.
Of course all of this isn't new (except the shiny picture), you can read much more details on IBM's Domino Performance Best Practices pages. This is just about the hardware layout. You need to consider the operating system too. But that's a story for another time. As usual YMMV.
XPages - the "other" skills
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 4:29a Stephan H Wissel In most of the XPages trainings I conducted in 2009 and 2010 there were participants with no prior exposure to Notes and Domino other than using it as a user. They all however had experience with web development. XPages' JavaScript, CSS and HTML was like their natural environment and they had no problem catching up with "the old Notes nuts". The later however, especially the "client only" developers struggled. They struggled not with DDE or XPages per se, but with the open standards it embraces. [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
xpages ajax
css
development
dojo
eclipse
google
java
javascript
oracle
soa
wiki
xml
xslt
61
eLearning in the enterprise vs. eLearning in education
Sat, Aug 28th 2010 4:29a Stephan H Wissel I had an interesting chat with the IT teacher of Catholic High about eLearning. I'm following the subject for a very long time. In the early eighties I bought one of the earliest eLearning authoring tools called OpenICE from Dialog Video (a Swiss company which seems to be history now - the only trace of OpenICE I could google was in a document in the download section of The Morrison Company.
There is a lot of money spend both in enterprises and in academic, but the stellar success stories are f [read] Keywords: collaboration
css
enterprise
google
integration
widget
wiki
176
XPages Medical Advice
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 11:38p Stephan H Wissel The truth about XPages:
But of course you know that and are in tune with the impermanence of being and continuous upgrade your skills. [read] Keywords: xpages wiki
66
Boys and their toys X
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 10:33p Stephan H Wissel Huawei topped their already impressive E5 device
with a new entry, the E583C
On top of being a mobile hotspot for 5 devices it spots a OLED display and via microSD up to 32G shared storage. So a small team working away easily can share what they are working on and access the Interweb at the same time using a good looking gadget.
(via godevice.com) [read] Keywords: gadget
mobile
wifi
136
Visualize using Mindmaps
Sun, Aug 15th 2010 6:29a Stephan H Wissel Mindmaps are an incredible tool to collect and share thoughts on any topic in a very compact and comprehensive format. Just look at the sample Ernest did for Water (his current topic in science):
He used iMindmap which has the most natural look from all mindmap software offerings I've seen so far (and is available on Win, Linux, Mac and iPad). It is the commercial offering of Tony Buzan who claims the invention of mindmapping. If you like eProductivity, you might want to look at MindManager, [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
linux
mac
wiki
117
Speed boost for your Notes client on Linux
Sun, Aug 1st 2010 2:29p Stephan H Wissel You need enough RAM. Follow these steps (adopted from here):
Stop the Notes client
Create a new directory: mkdir ~/notestemp
Edit your notes.ini and add:
view_rebuild_dir=/home/[yourid]/notestemp/
NOTES_TEMPDIR=/home/[yourid]/notestemp/
TempDir=/home/[yourid]/notestemp/
Edit the mounting table: sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Add this line (one line, tab separated values):
tmpfs /home/[yourid]/notestemp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0
and save the file
Mount the new directory:sudo mount -a (a [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
show-n-tell
linux
72
Command line tool for Linux command line junkies
Mon, Jul 19th 2010 12:25p Stephan H Wissel I found a little gem for "Friends of the commandline"TM. Since the autor suggested to improve this with zenity I went ahead and created ~/bin/runthis:
#!/bin/sh
#~/bin/runthis
############################################################################
# Runs commands that have been entered in the prompt box
# Originally published here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/2848/bash-at-your-fingertips-nifty-notifysend/
# Replaced command line with zenity dialog
######################### [read] Keywords: linux
76
Run
Mon, Jul 19th 2010 11:25a Stephan H Wissel KVM and VirtualBox are two virtualization solutions for Linux. KVM requires the module kvm_intel to be loaded, while VirtualBox can't run with the module running. So if you can't makeup your mind what to use, you need a little script magic to get this working. Here are the steps:
Download libnotify for nice bubble notifications (just eye candy):
sudo apt-get install libnotify (Of course you can use the Synaptics package manager in System-Administration and simply search for the library, but th [read] Keywords: administration
linux
virtualization
248
Getting close with IBM OneUI
Sat, Jul 17th 2010 8:24a Stephan H Wissel I recommended the use of IBM OneUI before including a helper stylesheet. While there is a complete documentation available, a little explanation about the how and why goes a long way. The OneUI is not so much about colours and fonts, but about structure, navigation and layout. Following its guidelines your applications get a consistent look, which user studies show increase user confidence about their ability to use your web application. This translates into less help desk calls. Any consistent [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
notes client
xpages application
applications
css
development
105
Multi column checkboxes and radio buttons
Mon, Jul 12th 2010 11:24p Stephan H Wissel Brian shared his implementation of multi-column check boxes. Having such a control mimicking the functionality of the Notes client is pretty helpful. Brian's approach however wasn't very re-usable, so I though of a way to come up with a more reusable solution:
The resulting custom controls can be easily added to any page with a few lines of code. You need to reference 2 supporting JavaScript libraries and then add a few lines to your page:
< xc:MultiColumnCheckBox numberOfColumns="3"dataB [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
xpages bleedyellow
bleedyellow.com
javascript
openntf
xml
