A wakeup call for the Australian Lotus Channel

Yesterday we completed the third of our free two-day Domino R8.5 Proof of Technology seminars which takes the cumulative total of attendees to well over fifty, and we've had some interesting feedback about the seminars:

• Customers love getting two full days of technical training and product positioning for free. I think the most popular session in the last seminar was the one about the best methods to counter the suggestion that their organizations should move to Exchange and Outlook. We'll be expanding that session for our next seminar in June
  
  
• Some of our competition admire the idea and at least two of them are now putting on their own free Lotus-centric seminars (according to friends of mine who work in those companies). I've heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so thanks for the compliment guys.
  
  
• Some of our competition hate the idea and claim that these seminars causes 'disharmony' in the Lotus sales channel because their present customers might wind up attending a seminar put on by another Lotus Business Partner. Well, Bollocks to them! IMHO the Customer is King and is entitled to talk to any and all Lotus Business Partners and to pick and choose between them to get the best mix of services. If our efforts in running these seminars makes another Business Partner feel 'disharmonized' then perhaps they need to ask themselves what are *they* doing to offer a better service to their customers.
  

These seminars will continue as long as the customers want them. We have our first Sametime/Quickr seminar running in May and the fourth Domino R8.5 Proof of Technology will be running in June. Now maybe those Australian IBM/Lotus Business 'Partners' who have been ignoring the Lotus portfolio will start talking to their current customers about the Lotus product range.

Because if they don't then we will...
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Free SameTime/Quickr training in Sydney

One interesting factoid that came out of the R8.5 Proof of Technology seminars that we have been running in Sydney is that not many (actually, almost none) of the attendees were aware that organisations with a current Lotus software subscription were entitled to run Lotus SameTime Entry and Lotus Quickr Entry in their environment at no extra charge.

Since Terry Boyd and I are having such fun running our R8.5 Domino seminars we have decided to start a new series of one day seminars to show people how to install and use the Sametime and Quickr software that they have already have. The seminar will be in Sydney in mid-May (date to be decided) with SameTime in the morning and Quickr in the afternoon so you can book for just half a day if you want.

The SameTime sessions will include:

• What can Sametime do - a demonstration of the full product.
• Installing Sametime - system requirements and integration with existing Domino servers.
• Administering a SameTime server.
• Advanced features - eg linking to other IM systems
  

A similar set of sessions will be held for Quickr in the afternoon.

Contact me (details on the left) if you want a free ticket for yourself or your managers to this SameTime/Quickr training. Limit two attendees per company.
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Are my old coding habits still valid?

"I document my Code
I've done it all my life
It makes the job take longer
But it keeps me out of strife"

I forget where I first heard that rhyme but I believe there is merit in its suggestion. A customer recently questioned my desire to document even my smallest code modules and when I stood my ground on the matter he started picking apart my Lotusscript (beware the semi-literate customer). He was quite firm in denying the need for the 'PHASE z - Housekeeping' section that I habitually add to the end of my code eg.


' PHASE z - Housekeeping
Set db = Nothing
Set OrgView = Nothing
Set NewOrgParentDoc = Nothing
Set ContactDoc = Nothing


I must admit that disposing of objects in this manner is a habit that I developed many moons ago and I'm not sure if its still needed in today's Lotusscript. Am I being too careful here and wasting my customers coding dollars or is this kind of object recycling still Best Practice for Lotusscript?
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Free Domino technical training in Sydney

In November last year two IBM/Lotus Business Partners (Binary Concepts and Saxon Systems) ran a free two day Domino R8.5 Proof of Technology seminar for Lotus customers at IBM in Sydney. This event provided IT Managers and other decision-making executives with hands-on learning for DAOS, ID Vault, X-Pages and other enhanced features that come with Domino R8.5.

This technical training event is being repeated on Tuesday 16th and Wednesday 17th February 2010 at IBM in St. Leonards and is an excellent opportunity for organisations that are considering an upgrade to Domino R8.5 to understand the nuts and bolts of the new Lotus technology.

During the November seminar attendees were encouraged to raise technical issues relating to improving their own Domino environment and this theme of the seminar was so successful that it is being expanded in the February event. With over twenty customer attendees and four software consultants (plus a smattering of local Loti) spending two days talking about the problems of maintaining a Domino infrastructure, you're sure to get some good answers to your tough questions.

Terry (Terry Boyd - Saxon Systems) and I will also give you our unvarnished opinion on the announcements made by Lotus at the recently concluded Lotussphere 2010.

To obtain more information about the seminar or to reserve your seat at the event, contact me via email on gdodge at bcd dot net dot au.

Limit of two attendees per organisation.

Did I mention that the seminar is Free?
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Oh no, Lotus... surely you wouldn't ...

Installing Lotus Foundations on a client PC is normally a straightforward job - click here, click there, then twiddle my thumbs for five minutes while the code copies down from the server.

Not this time. The install script kept bombing out with 'unable to create file' errors. Two minutes of checking with a text editor found the problem:

set noidfile=no
set logfile=c:\Notes850_Setup.log
echo -------------------- >> %logfile%

A hardcoded 'c:\' in a setup script without a prompt to warn the person installing the software? Surely Lotus wouldn't ... but alas, Lotus did. Of course, this works wonderfully when you are setting up on a PC with a c:\ drive but not so well when the local drive is set to h:\ and a c:\ drive doesn't exist.
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Running BES and Traveler on the same R8.5 Server

Is it possible to install Traveler on a Domino R8.50 server that is already running BES 5.0?

The server runs on Windows Server 2008.
At first glance I don't see a problem, but has anyone done this before?
Are there any gotchas I need to know about?
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Free Technical Training for Notes/Domino R8.5x in Sydney

Over the past few months the talented Holli Konig and her All-Dancing Business Partners have been running R8.5 'Proof of Technology' seminars across the USA. These seminars are targeted at IT Managers, Application Developers, System Administrators and Architects evaluating IBM Lotus Notes/Domino.

Now this two day seminar is coming to Sydney with hands-on sessions for System Administration ( Domino Attachment and Object Service plus ID Vault and Shared Login) and for Application Development (Composite Applications and Xpages). The dates for this two day course are next Thursday 19th and Friday 20th November and the venue is the IBM Innovation Centre at 601 Pacific Highway St. Leonards.

This is NOT a marketing event. IBM are providing the facilities for the seminar but the course will be presented by technically skilled and certified IBM/Lotus Business Partners.

The seminar treads a middle ground between management and technical issues eg There are hands-on exercises in building an X-Page but there is also discussion on why an X-Page is a better web construct than a legacy 'webified' Notes application from a business process perspective.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their own questions and to partake in a vigorous and free-flowing discussion about the technical 'how-do-you-do-this' nuts and bolts of working with Notes/Domino R8.5. On Friday morning there will be a 30 minute opportunity to quiz Mike Garbett (Director of Worldwide Sales - Collaboration, Lotus Software) about directions for the Lotus Product suite.

Did I mention that the seminar is free? Attendance is restricted to 24 people (one PC per attendee) and there is a limit of two attendees per organisation. If you are interested in attending the event then contact me on 0435 094 694 or by email on gdodge at bcd dot net dot au.
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OT: Is .docx the new standard?

I just had an email discussion with a client who had sent me a file with a .docx extension. My response to him was that .docx was a proprietary Microsoft format and I would prefer it as Open Document Format or even as a .doc so I could read it. His response was that Microsoft was the standard format and I needed to get software that could read it.

It's always difficult having these discussions with clients but I managed to gently walk him through saving the file as a .doc and resending it to me.

So I'm curious about the rest of the world. Has .docx succeeded in becoming the new standard or does the rest of the Lotus world insist on receiving .doc as a file format?
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Domino Double Certifications - Jack of All Trades and Master of None ?

I had an interesting chat with a colleague last week regarding the evolution of consulting roles in the Notes industry. In the 'Good Old Days' (TM) of Notes Release 1 through R4 every man and his dog was both a System Administrator and an Application Developer. Perhaps they were better at one side than the other but you could have a chat with everyone you met at Lotussphere without encountering too many blank looks.

R5 through R7 drove a wedge through the tribe and split it into two separate camps - not quite as bad as the Hatfields and the McCoys but it suddenly seemed acceptable to wear only one hat and to plead ignorance as to what the other tribe was doing.

At the risk of becoming a "Jack of All Trades and Master of None", some of us have kept a foot in both camps by maintaining certifications in both System Administration and Application Development, but I'm wondering how long that can go on. I'm just about to embark on a one-week intensive e-learning experience with X-Pages to prepare me for my R8.5 App Dev upgrade exam followed later by a similar effort for the R8.5 Sys Admin upgrade. My point is that the Notes/Domino environment is just so d@mn big these days that no-one can hope to know it all.

I'm interested in hearing what other people's approach is to certification. Is it worth the effort to maintain a double certification? I see it as a good personal benchmark but do customers really care about such things?
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Installing VMWare on Lotus Foundations

I've had a question about loading the Vistualization module in LFS and I decided to make it into a separate post of its own. There are three downloadable components required to run VMWare. The LFS update to version 1.1 and the Run package are both downloadable from where-ever you obtained your original LFS software but the VMWare module is only available through IBM/Lotus Business Partners.

You also need to create a free account on www.vmware.com and request Linux licence keys. VMWare will send you an email with a validated login and once you follow the link in the email to get your licence keys you will have the licence keys to paste into the appropriate dialog box when you run the VMWare install. When all of that is done, if you select the 'Add-ons' option from the left hand menu you should see the following entry in your list under the 'Status' tab.

Status = (Tick)
Team = lf-virtualization
Add-on Container = Lotus Foundations Run 1.1
Enabled = Yes

At that point the VMWare module is installed and ready to go. Click on the 'Virtualization' tab adjacent to the 'Status' tab and then click on the button at the bottom of the page labeled 'Advanced Virtualization Settings'. This will open a new LFS interface communicating via Port 8333 and you can begin to create Virtual Machines.


The only problem I had was the ever-persistant Firefox glitch that sees any new web interface with LFS as a security exception.
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Exposing Domino Web apps under Foundations

You can publicly expose a LFS-hosted Notes database on the web via port 4443 eg https://www.xyz.com.au:4443/mynotesdatabase.nsf but the documentation is silent about what Notes web features will/ won't work in that environment. Note that you need secure HTTP (probably because that is the webmail port) which raises the question of how you authenticate visitors BEFORE they get to your application.

The Nitix Knowledgebase lists ports 1352, 2222, 4443 and 8585 as being available through the Nitix Blue/Lotus Foundations Start server firewall but I've only been successful with web access through 4443. I would guess that 1352 is limited to NNTP but I'm curious about the possibilities of 2222 and 8585.

Anyone used those ports before?
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Foundations can be so boring at times...

I was hoping to get a really meaty post out of my upgrading my server to Foundations 1.1 and Domino 8.5 (plus installing VMWare) but it all went according to the manual. Less than an hours work of copying files and rebooting the server when instructed.

Boring.
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The score so far: Humans 1 - Foundations auto-config 0

A customer based in a serviced office has an installation with the eth0 port connected to his internal network and the eth1 port plugged into a communal switch which eventually leads the connection out into the internet. LFS allows manual IP configuration of eth0 (lets call it 192.168.0.1) but insisted on doing its own "search and configure" for the internet connection. When we first set it up it found the right address (lets call it 111.111.111.111) and everything was fine and dandy.

Then the serviced office provider decided to install a new firewall and his customers had to endure some connection downtime while that happened. When all of the systems were reconnected my customer was perplexed to find that his rebooted LFS server was now showing the firewall's external IP (lets call it 222.222.222.222) as its own eth1 IP address.

We did toy with the idea of adding new DNS entries to LFS to try to work around the problem but I dislike those type of bandaid solutions - they tend to come back and bite you further down the track when you're solving some other unrelated configuration problem.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth and consumption of coffee we found an answer by connecting the LFS eth1 to a reprogrammed router which that been isolated from the rest of the network. The router range was limited to a single address (111.111.111.111) and when we ran the LFS netscan command the LFS eth1 picked up the magic number and permanently stored it into its configuration file. We then pulled the eth1 cable out of the router and plugged it into the regular network switch and everyone was happy. We still haven't figured out why LFS was picking up the Firewall external IP and that question might stay in the too-hard basket for some years to come. I think a review of the Firewall configuration might reveal some interesting anomolies, but we aren't allowed to examine that hardware.

Every day is a new adventure.
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VMWare is now running on Lotus Foundations Server

The VMWare module for the LFS environment is now available for download and installing it is a three step process.

1. Upgrade your core server code to Lotus Foundations Start V1.1.0 which is just a standard software update and handled automatically by LFS once you give it permission to do so. Alternatively, you can install Lotus Foundations Branch Office.
   
   
2. Install the "Run" add-on which comes on the Foundations media packs and is also available as a download from IBM. The process is fundamentally the same as installing the Domino server add-on - just copy the .pkg file to the autoinstall directory then click the install button.
   
   
3. The third step - the installation of the VMWare module - is a little trickier. The VMWare module is only downloadable by IBM/Lotus business partners who are empowered by IBM to pass it on to their customers. There is no additional fee paid to IBM for this module. Once you have the VMWare module you will need to register it with VMWare to gain the linux license serial keys which you need to run the module. There is no fee for the licence keys but there is a limit of five keys per customer registration.

I hate registering my name with organisation with whom I have no regular business dealing but I think the deal is fair. IBM has tweaked LFS to run a VMWare environment but they are not selling the VMWare experience - that is just another option which they give you. On the other hand VMWare is providing a free sample of their environment to LFS customers but if you want to move beyond five licence keys then presumably you'll need to contact VMWare and start talking about upgrades.

Now how soon will it be before we see a 90 day trial of Quickr and SameTime servers bundled with Foundations?

I'm not taking bets.
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Lotus Foundations licencing discriminates against Macs?

While trolling through the Lotus Foundations on-line help files (Alright! I admit it! I don't have a social life!) I came across the following anomoly:

*****************************************************
A Lotus Foundations Start CAL includes a license to run a subset of available desktop clients. The supported options are:

* Lotus Notes 8.x Standard for Windows
* Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO) 8.x for Windows
* Lotus Notes 7.0.2 for Mac

A number of client options are not covered by this license. These include, but are not limited to:

* Lotus Domino Administrator & Designer
* Lotus Notes for Linux
* Lotus Notes 8.x for Mac

*****************************************************

I can understand that the Admin and Designer clients need a separately purchased CAL and I can almost twist logic sufficiently to forgive Lotus for excluding all Linux clients for technical compatibility reasons, but can someone from Lotus explain why you can give a user Notes 7.02 on a Mac as a valid Foundations CAL but if you upgrade their Notes to the same R8 version as the rest of your Foundations community then you need another CAL?
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Free access to kb.nitix.com

kb.nitix.com is the public address of IBM's Foundations/Nitix knowledgebase. There is no log-in required so every man and his dog can freely access the information.

It's a great bookmark to have, but make sure that the articles you rely on are flagged as relevant to Lotus Foundations server rather than just the legacy Nitix products.
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SBS 2008 obviously wasn't built on a secure Foundation.

Duffbert et. al. have already blogged about Microsoft killing off their "One-Care" subscription security service but I'd like to chew on the implications for SBS2008 for a couple of paragraphs.

So Microsoft spends five years and umpteen gazillion dollars to research and develop their replacement for SBS2003 and only ONE WEEK after releasing the product they find it necessary to declare End-Of-Life on a key component of the bundle and announce its replacement by a new software package that won't be delivered for another seven months. Microsoft Watch quoted Microsoft as saying:

“Microsoft will continue to support Windows Live OneCare for Server on SBS 2008 through June 30, 2009. Windows Live OneCare for Server subscribers will be supported for the duration of their subscription.”

So pick your favorite theory:

• Microsoft discovered some impossible-to-fix code cancer deep in the bowels of OneCare and decided to put it out of its misery before some geek publicly exposed the flaw.
• OneCare was never more than smoke and mirrors and was only kept around long enough for Microsoft to fulfill its SBS2008 upgrade pledges for customers who couldn't wait to get off SBS2003.
• Microsoft installed a copy of Lotus Foundation server and realized that their own products were so far behind the technology curve that their only chance was to throw some FUD into the market.

Actually all of these theories could be true. Whichever way you look at it, there are some serious questions to be asked about whether SBS2008 is "Ready for Business".

EDIT: D'oh!... I left out the traditional Microsoft strategy. Since they can't beat Macafee and Symantec in the marketplace then they'll just develop a freeware version of their products and erode their revenue until either (or both) of the competitors go out of business. Just like they did with Netscape Navigator ...
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Will Diablo III run on VMWare in Foundations?

At home I have:

• a nearly-new XBox running Lotus Foundations server;
• a permanently moored laptop (dead screen) which I use as an XP workstation;
• a desktop running as a Linux SUSE testbed, and
  
• a KVM joining them all together.

(plus a PC for my lovely wife and a laptop for use when traveling to/from work on the train).

I must admit my homemade server rack is kinda crowded.

While coming home today I started thinking about getting rid of my semi-dead laptop and my desktop and running those environments as VMWare sessions on my Foundations server. I'd probably have to beef up the servers ram from 2GB to 4GB but if it worked then I can clear a lot of the clutter from around my desk.

The big question is whether Diablo III will run in that environment.
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So what the heck is a Hypervisor?

Wikipedia's description of a Hypervisor as " ... a virtualization platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time" is a pretty good answer. Putting it at its most basic level, you can minimise your maximum exposure to Windows Server failures without losing any Windows functionality. Here's an example:

1. You run up a Lotus Foundations Server which can create VMWare sessions as required.
   
   
2. You want to run Active Directory on a Windows Server? No problem - kick off a VMWare session, load Windows Server and start Active Directory.
   
   
3. You want your Lotus Foundations server to be a member of that Active Directory Domain? No problem - register your Lotus Foundations Server on the Active Directory running on the Windows server which only exists in the VMWare session running on the Lotus Foundations Server which you are joining to the Domain.
   
   (Yeah, my head is starting to hurt too)
   

So now we are running an encapsulated MS Server with Active Directory where it can't hurt anybody. If that Windows server pulls a BSOD then you can close that VMWare session and restart your Windows server with Active Directory in a new session. Lotus Foundations won't mind and your users probably won't even notice. You can run other MS server tasks in their own VMWare session - even MS Exchange Server if you are so inclined. Suddenly you have the option to pick and choose which Windows servers you let out of the sandbox. Maybe after a few months you'll notice that the Emperor Has No Clothes and you don't actually need Windows server at all.

My completely unauthorized uninformed SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess) is that we'll see the Hypervisor slipstreamed into Foundations in Q1/2009. If you are an existing Foundations customer or Lotus Business Partner then you can request to sign up for the beta code.

I'd say the addition of VMWare to Lotus Foundations Server is potentially one of the most significant threats to face the Microsoft Windows Server quasi-monopoly since Linux first started poking its nose into the corporate market. Be afraid Microsoft... be very afraid.
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More training in Sydney

I spent all of last week learning Linux (courtesy of IBM) and what I learned is dovetailing quite nicely into my eight months of working with Lotus Foundations. My immediate reaction after completing that course is that Linux certification will be what separates the high value Foundations consultants in the marketplace. You don't need Linux skills to install and support Foundations but everything makes a whole lot more sense when you have those skills on board.

On 13th and 14th November I'll be attending another (free) training course at IBM in Sydney to go through the official Foundations training and after that I'll be feeling ready to take on the world. Anyone else out there booked into the Sydney Foundations course?
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