Filed under: Notes/Domino, Sametime, Technology
Anyone who is planning to submit a Lotusphere 2009 Abstract needs to remember that it is due by 12 noon EST today. I have a couple in progress which I plan to submit before the deadline. Unlike last year, I have not seen any indication that the deadline will be extended, so get your thinking caps on and crank out some abstracts!
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/events/lotusphere2009/abstracts.html
Filed under: Notes/Domino, Technology
As most of you have seen, the Notes Domino 8.5 Public Beta went public a few weeks ago. I recently installed the client and I can tell that there have been major performance improvements in the handling of the various functions. First of all, the team has changed the startup so that it appears to start quicker. Overall the stability of the client is much improved. Actions such as opening my mail file seem to occur much quicker so I’m sure that some performance tweaks were put in there.
If you haven’t downloaded and installed the Notes 8.5 Public Beta 1, I would strongly recommend trying it out. I am so confident with this client now that I am using as my primary client and I have completely removed my Notes 8.0.1 installation.
Here’s the link to the download site:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf/DateAllThreadedWeb/a6a60b2adfabe227852574490072d7a5?OpenDocument
Filed under: Notes/Domino, Sametime, Technical Support, Technology
The IBM Software group is pleased to host an Open Mic conference call on the topic of Upgrading to Sametime 8.0. This opportunity to speak with experts on this specific topic is completely free of charge.
The call will take place on Tuesday, March 11, 2008, with two sessions:
10:00 AM EDT (2:00 PM GMT, Tuesday, March 11, 2008)
9:00 PM EDT (1:00 AM GMT, Wednesday, March 12, 2008)
For dial-in information as well as instructions about how to submit a question in advance, refer to document Sametime Open Mic conference call: Upgrading to Sametime 8.0 – March 11, 2008.
Filed under: Notes/Domino, Technology
Announced at Lotusphere 2008, Notes/Domino 8.0.1 in English has arrived and will be available for download on the IBM Download site (Passport Advantage). Here are some of the new and improved features from the product announcement:
- Deployment enhancements to Lotus Domino that enable administrators to free up time and focus on other areas.
- A new mode for Lotus Domino Web Access optimized for bandwidth. It addresses the needs of users who are traveling or are constrained with dial-up connections.
- Linked to other components of the Lotus portfolio including integration with IBM Lotus Quickr, IBM Lotus Connections, increased support for IBM Lotus Sametime® 8.0 (includes Lotus Sametime Unyte).
- Greater extensibility through Lotus Notes Widgets.
- Support for Citrix Presentation Server 4.5.
- Database compression, which significantly reduces the storage size of Domino databases.
- Domino 64-bit native support option for Microsoft® Windows 2003 and IBM AIX® platforms. 64 bit support enables Domino to address more memory on the server than is possible in previous versions.
- Support for FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) 140-2 standards encryption for Lotus Notes e-mail.
I’ve been using Domino 8.0.1 for the last two weeks and I have found that it is more stable and responsive than Notes 8.0. Best of all, the Integrated Sametime client code has been updated to the Sametime 8.0 codestream which offers many bug fixes and performance enhancements.
Product Announcement: http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/4/897/ENUS208-024/index.html
Filed under: Notes/Domino, Sametime, Technical Support, Technology
The Windows Server 2008 package for x86 architectures finally showed up on the MSDN site last week. I finally got some time over the weekend to install this in a VMWare environment. Since Windows Server 2008 had adopted many of the features available in Microsoft Windows Vista and there is definitely a learning curve. Some of the aspects which have been adopted are the security architecture and the Windows Activation wizard. Overall, the operating system seems to startup quicker and run quicker. However once you get into the operating system, everything changes.
Activation Wizard
The Windows activation wizard has chanced and Microsoft has assigned a product key which is valid for three days. This prevents users from having to provide a product key immediately during the installation process. One tip when activating windows is to go into the Server Configuration option to Change Product Key before you try and activate. This was the only way I was able to activate Windows.
Notes/Domino/Sametime
Now being a person that always wants to try the latest toys out, I decided to attempt an install of Domino and Sametime on Windows 2008 Server. This is configuration is NOT SUPPORTED, and based on the results of my attempt, I would not recommend that anyone try to install Notes, Domino or Sametime on Windows 2008 Server until it is officially supported by IBM. That being said, let me describe my results to you. Since Windows 2008 server adopted many of the security features, this means that changes will need to be made to the way Domino and Sametime operate.
When attempting to install Domino, the installer went through smoothly however launching the server configuration application was problematic. It appears that even as the administrator of the machine, Windows still requires the application to be launched manually. After launching Domino server configuration application with Administrator rights, I was able to complete the Domino configuration and carry onto the next step….launching the server. So the moment of truth comes, will the Domino server launch? The answer is yes. To launch the Domino server I had to run some of the modules in Windows 2003 compatibility mode and also set the “Run as Administrator” option. Also, once the server launches I was unable to use the “Interact with Desktop” option to see the Domino server console on the OS level. However the server console could be accessed via the Domino Administrator client.
Sametime components
After the Domino server was installed, I started my testing on the Sametime server. The Sametime install went through flawlessly again to my relief. I did get the “operating system you are installing on is not supported” message, however it did not prevent the install from proceeding. After the server was installed, I fired up domino and after several minutes all services appeared to be started. When testing, it appears that there were problems accessing meetings directly from the Windows 2008 server with Sun Java 1.5. I still need to do some additional testing to verify the other functionality.
To conclude, I would strongly recommend that any administrator out there think twice before installing Domino and Sametime on a Windows 2008 Server. It is not supported and there are definitely a few kinks (which I’m sure our development team is aware of) which need to be worked out.
Posted on September 26th, 2008 by Andy Yiu
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