Authors:
Mary Shaheen, Senior Software Engineer, IBM, mary_shaheen@us.ibm.com

Introduction:
This document will describe the details of the main System Test Configuration (SVT) for Alloy 1.0 deployment, focusing on the user layout and configuration.

Installation diagram:


Configuration Specifics:

User layout - Mail files:

Two physical AIX machines were used for the user mail. Each physical machine had two Domino Partitions; each Domino Partition was configured to use a unique NIC (Network Interface Card) with a unique IP address.

Machine 1:
Domino Server 1a (DS-1a), Cluster A
User range: mail1-mail1000, replicas of mail1001-mail2000
Domino Server 1b (DS-1b), Cluster B
User range: mail2001-mail3000, replicas of mail3001-mail4000

Machine 2:
Domino Server 2a (DS-2a), Cluster A
User range: mail1001-mail2000, replicas of mail1-mail1000
Domino Server 2b (DS-2b), Cluster B
User range: mail3001-mail4000, replicas of mail2001-mail3000

The Alloy users were numbered from mail1501-mail2500, which distributed them among both clusters and across both physical machines.

Initially, the users were created with default Domino 8.0.2 mail8.ntf templates. By design, each mail server was going to host 500 Alloy users as the user's primary mail server or as a replica. This required each mail server to have 2 active user mail templates. In order to create 2 mail template on each server, the following overview steps were followed.

On each of DS-1a and DS-1b, via a Notes Admin Client:
1. A 'New Copy' of mail8.ntf was created, named mail8alloy.ntf. Within the database properties, update the "Title:" Mail (R8) Alloy


2. The template name for mail8.ntf is StdR8Mail. Template names must be unique per Domino server, so the database properties required modification on each new copy. Select "Database is a master template" and fill in a unique "Template name" of your choice, i.e. StdR8MailAlloy:


3. The 'Update Mail Template' procedure as detailed in the Alloy 1.0 Information Center should be run now on these new template for the Alloy design elements to be incorporated. Additionally, copy the nderpmail.ntf file to each mail server's Domino data directory that hosts Alloy user's mail files.

4. Create a replica of these new template on the cluster mates (DS-2a and DS-2b)

5. Once the Alloy mail template has been propagated, the Alloy user's mail can be created directly from the new template or existing mail files can be assigned the new template. We assigned existing users to the new mail file using the Domino 'convert' command.

A list of all mail files to be converted to the Alloy template was created per cluster. The path should be relative to the data directory. This information can also be retrieved from the user's person record directly or via LDAP:


Store the list of mail files to convert in a text file similar to:
Cluster1.txt:
mail_nas\mail1501.nsf
mail_nas\mail1502.nsf
mail_nas\mail1503.nsf
mail_nas\mail1504.nsf
. . .
mail_nas\mail2000.nsf

Cluster2.txt:
mail_nas\mail2001.nsf
mail_nas\mail2002.nsf
mail_nas\mail2003.nsf
mail_nas\mail2004.nsf
. . .
mail_nas\mail2500.nsf

6. On a member of cluster 1, within the Domino console, run load convert -inherit -f Cluster1.txt * mail8alloy.ntf
On a member of cluster 2, within the Domino console, run load convert -inherit -f Cluster2.txt * mail8alloy.ntf
NB: On Windows Domino servers, the command is 'nconvert,' on UNIX, it's 'convert'

7. Once the mail files have been converted, you then need to run 'load design' or wait for the Domino Design task to run on the schedule set (by default, it runs nightly) in order for the existing mail files to inherit the Alloy mail template design elements.


User layout - Person record modifications:

To use Alloy, you must map Domino users to corresponding SAP users. This can be accomplished in a few different ways. In SVT, we chose to map the person records in Domino via the User Name field. Each user record in the mail1501-mail2500 range was mapped to a corresponding sap id. This mapping is required for SAML authentication between the Domino and SAP server environments. Example:

sap=SAPusername was added to the User Name field of all the Alloy users. We used an agent to propagate this value. Your Domino system administrator will need to determine a manner in which to map the Alloy users in the Domino directory to their SAP counterpart manually, via agents or via a third party application like Tivoli Directory Integrator.


Plug-in modification and distribution:

In order for the Notes Standard clients to be able to use the Alloy functionality, there is a Notes sidepanel plugin that needs to be distributed to each client. For the SVT users, the client package was modified and posted to a web site on the Alloy server.
1. The deploy\plugin_customization.ini was edited. The content was replaced with : com.ibm.nderp.client/NDERPMDWS_URL=https://yourAlloyServerFQDN.yourco.com/nderpws.nsf/MetaDataService?openwebservice
2. The entire client package was zipped and posted to the Alloy Domino server's website (data\domino\html\Alloy_client.zip)
3. Each client user was instructed to download this Alloy_client.zip file, extract it and install it by running the included setup.exe

Once the plugin is installed, when the client launches, the user's metadata is downloaded to the client. The metadata provides information that the client needs in order to know what report templates are available to the user as well as workflow and role information that impacts what forms and work flows to expose.


Conclusion:

In order to deploy the Alloy mail template into an existing environment, care in planning should be taken to properly apply the correct templates to the correct users. It's worthwhile to devise a model for distributing the mail templates, the user name mappings and methods and policies for installing the Alloy client plug-in. This planning will greatly contribute to distributing these artifacts efficiently within an enterprise environment.


Other Alloy information resources:

Alloy Product Page
Alloy Support Page
Alloy Product Documentation
Alloy Posts in Notes and Domino wiki