Page 2: Deploying Domino 8.5.x servers

Abstract

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Attention:

Notes and Domino 8.5.3 shipped on October 4, 2011. It is recommended you upgrade to the latest version available and you can check the Notes/Domino Fix List for this information.

Depending on the size of your organization and the number of Domino servers involved, an organization upgrade schedule may range from a few hours to a few months. An organization with a small number of users and a handful of Domino servers can easily be upgraded in a single day and even in a matter of hours. However, an enterprise, such as IBM, with hundreds of thousands of users in Multiple Domains on hundreds of Domino servers located throughout the world will implement an upgrade plan that spans several months. Fortunately, one of the great strengths of Notes & Domino is that it maintains a very strong interoperability story between releases that makes this all possible.

The number of different ways to perform a Notes & Domino upgrade is almost limitless. This document will cover only a few of these ways and hopefully give Notes & Domino Admins several ideas they may decide to incorporate in their own upgrade plans. The document will discuss recommended "Best Practices" for upgrading small and medium businesses as well as how large enterprises may go about it.

It is always highly recommended, as time permits within your organization, you keep as close to the most current major release of Notes & Domino available. It is also highly encourage to keep up with Maintenance Releases (MRs) and Fix Packs (FPs) for each major release as they become available as well.

This document contains the following sections:

- Review of the "Planning the 8.5.x Server Deployment" phase

- Domino Maintenance Tasks

- Enabling new features

Review of the "Planning the 8.5.x Server Deployment" phase

Before performing the upgrade steps mentioned here, it is VERY important that you read and follow the steps in the "Planning the 8.5.x Server Deployment" page. There is a lot of prerequisite information covered there that will set you up for success during this phase of the deployment.

If you have already followed the "Planning the 8.5.x Server Deployment" steps, you should feel pretty comfortable at this point because you have tested the upgrade in a test environment and you have completed an upgrade pilot. The following things cannot be stressed enough:

It is highly recommended that you make backups of all files (ID files, notes.ini files, system databases, applications, etc.) and validate the integrity of the backups if you have not done this already.
Performing maintenance on your databases before or during the upgrade process is very important, but may also be very time consuming. Repairing any database corruption before you upgrade is the best way to avoid big headaches later. Ideally, you would be able to run at least FIXUP -j and possibly COMPACT -c on ALL of your databases when instructed to. If you don't have the time to do that, you should try to run the maintenance tasks on at least your system databases. You can use indirect files to save time in this process.
To have the least end-user impact, it is recommended to upgrade your environment during off-hours or over a weekend.

Domino maintenance tasks

Here is some information that will help you perform Domino database maintenance during the upgrade.

Running Domino Maintenance Tasks when the server is shut down

When you read through the upgrade sections below, there will be steps for running some Domino Maintenance Tasks while the server is down. Here is some information on how to do that.

UNIX: "Running compact, fixup, and updall on AIX, Linux, and Solaris when a Domino server is down" (#1303727)

IBM i (AS400): "How to run Fixup, Compact, or other command while the Domino iSeries server is down" (#1102349)

Windows: To run Domino Maintenance Tasks while the server is shut down (offline), add the letter "n" to the beginning of the Domino server command (required when Domino is shut down, Windows platforms only).

1. Open a command window (Start -> Run -> type "cmd" -> click Enter).

2. Navigate to the file system folder where the Domino server is installed (same directory where nserver.exe is located).

3. From that path, type the Domino server command in the command window, adding the letter "n" before the name of the Domino server task. For example:

x:\Lotus\Domino\nfixup.exe names.nsf -f -j -v

x:\Lotus\Domino\ncompact.exe names.nsf -c

x:\Lotus\Domino\nupdall.exe admin4.nsf -R

x:\Lotus\Domino\nupdall.exe admin4.nsf -X

Use indirect files to save time running maintenance tasks

To save time, you can use multiple indirect files to run the same maintenance task multiple times concurrently. Fixup, compact, updall, design and the convert tasks all support using indirect files. Additionally, you can create batch/scripts that run several maintenance tasks serially against different indirect files to help complete them in a much more timely fashion.

Wiki article: Using indirect files to run maintenance tasks

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Recommended Best Practices for upgrading Small and Medium Business environments

Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are generally defined as having 10,000 users or less and 50 servers or less.

SMB Deployment Sequence

The recommended deployment sequence for this type of environment is:

1. Upgrade the Notes clients that administrators will use to edit and operate on the Domino Directory

2. Upgrade Administration Server of Domino Directory

3. Allow the new Domino Directory design to replicate freely to the other servers

4. Upgrade the Hub servers

5. Upgrade the Resource and Reservations (R&R) servers

6. Upgrade the Mail servers

7. Upgrade the SMTP servers

8. Upgrade the Application/Web servers

9. Upgrade 3rd Party/Companion Product servers

10. Upgrade the general population to Lotus Notes 8.5.x

11. Replace design of mail files with MAIL85.NTF

Upgrading Domino Servers

1. Make sure the Domino Server to be upgraded is shut down “cleanly” (no errors or hangs)

If the Domino Server does not shut down "cleanly"

a) Run nsd -kill to cleanup

b) With the Domino Server still down, run a Domino maintenance task against a non-existent database name which will flush the transactional logs to disk and essentially simulate a "clean" Domino Server shutdown.

Here is an example:

c:\domino> nfixup.exe fred.nsf

Restart Analysis (117 MB): 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Recovery Manager: Recovery being performed for DB d:\notefile\mail.box

Recovery Manager: Recovery being performed for DB d:\notefile\names.nsf

Recovery Manager: Recovery being performed for DB d:\notefile\log.nsf

Restart Replay (116 MB): 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

04/22/2008 04:33:03 PM Recovery Manager: Restart Recovery complete. (3/2 databases needed full/partial recovery)

04/22/2008 04:33:07 PM Informational, rebuild view needed - collection object was deleted (reading d:\notefile\names.nsf view note Title:'($Servers)')

04/22/2008 04:33:08 PM Informational, rebuilding view - container integrity lost (reading d:\notefile\names.nsf view note Title:'($Servers)')

04/22/2008 04:33:08 PM Informational, rebuild view needed - collection object was deleted (reading d:\notefile\names.nsf view note Title:'($Servers)')

04/22/2008 04:33:10 PM Database Fixup: Started

04/22/2008 04:33:10 PM Database Fixup: The pathname 'd:\notefile\fred' was not found: File does not exist

04/22/2008 04:33:10 PM Database Fixup: Shutdown

2. Install Domino 8.5.x

3. Copy customized templates into place

4. Run the design task to refresh the design of system databases

Note: See the "Planning the 8.5.x Server Deployment" page on how to verify inheritance is enabled for each system database

5. Run the updall task to rebuild views with design or collation changes

Note: Use indirect files to save time

6. Restart the Domino Server

7. Proceed to the “Next” server

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Recommended Best Practices for upgrading Enterprise environments

An Enterprise business is generally defined as having more than 10,000 users and more than 50 servers. It can easily take many weeks or even months to upgrade all servers while end-users are anxious to use the new 8.x interface as soon as possible.

Important information concerning design changes to the Domino Directory

Two critical views, ($USERS) and ($SERVERACCESS), are utilized when a Notes Client or another Domino Server attempts to authenticate with any given server. The design upgrade will result in modified views being rebuilt from scratch when first opened. If a Domino Server us up and running when these views are being rebuilt, all authentication attempts to that server will be blocked from completing until these two views are finished rebuilding. This can result in end-users experiencing significant delays/hangs when attempting to access a Domino Server in this state until the view rebuilds complete. Even Domino Clustering is ineffective while view rebuilding is on-going. However, if the views are rebuilt with the Domino Server down, the Notes Client will take full advantage of Domino Clustering and fail over in a timely manner.

Because Enterprises have many more users in their Domino Directories, the rebuilding of the two critical views will take longer, especially if the Domino Server is up and running and the view rebuilds are competing for cycles. Therefore, it is very important to allow the new Domino Directory design to replicate out at off-hours and/or on the weekend allowing the views to be rebuilt with limited end-user impact. Alternatively, you can control the flow of the new Domino Directory design within the Domain and only upgrade to the new Domino Directory design as you upgrade each individual Domino Server and assure all critical views are rebuilt prior to restarting the newly upgraded Domino Server.

Because rebuilding ($Users) and ($Server Access) and even upgrading to a new ODS can be time consuming on a very large Domino Directory, it is not uncommon in an Enterprise to do all this work once on the first server upgraded and then make a copy of the updated directory which is subsequently copied onto the next server being upgraded right after the install of Domino 8.5.x is completed.

Control the flow of the Domino Directory Design

As with almost everything in Notes & Domino there are several ways to accomplish this. Here a couple of recommended ways:

Enterprise Deployment Sequence #1

1. Remove all instances of the Domino Directory template (PUBNAMES.NTF) from your domain(s).

2. Upgrade the Notes clients that administrators will use to edit and operate on the Domino Directory

3. Prohibit "Design elements" from replicating on Domino servers of which you want to control the new design. Do this by:

- From the Domino Directory choose File -> Replication -> Options for this Application

- Select the Advanced Tab

- In the "Receive these elements from other replicas" section, uncheck "Design elements"

Note: Once you upgrade a Domino Server, be sure to allow (check) Design elements to be received for the replica of the Domino Directory on this server

4. Upgrade Administration Server of Domino Directory

5. Upgrade the Hub servers

6. Upgrade the Resource and Reservations (R&R) servers

7. Upgrade the Mail servers

8. Upgrade the SMTP servers

9. Upgrade the Application/Web servers

10. Upgrade 3rd Party/Companion Product servers

11. Upgrade the general population to Lotus Notes 8.5.x

12. Replace design of mail files with MAIL85.NTF

Enterprise Deployment Sequence #2

1. Remove all instances of the Domino Directory template (PUBNAMES.NTF) from your domain(s).

2. Configure Domino Directory ACL so that a new design can only flow in a single direction:

Admin Server of Domino Directory -> Hub Servers -> Spoke Servers.

This ensures there is no backflow of Directory changes as you upgrade Spoke Servers followed by Hub Servers followed by the Admin Server of the Domino Directory.

3. Upgrade the Notes clients that administrators will use to edit and operate on the Domino Directory

4. Upgrade the SMTP servers

5. Upgrade the Mail servers

6. Upgrade the Resource and Reservations (R&R) servers

7. Upgrade the general population to Lotus Notes 8.5.x

8. Replace design of mail files with MAIL85.NTF

9. Upgrade the Application/Web servers

10. Upgrade 3rd Party/Companion Product servers

11. Upgrade the Hub Servers

12. Upgrade the Administration Server of the Domino Directory

Upgrading the “First” Domino Server in an Enterprise