Blog Host: Michael Lazar - senior consultant, Equant READ ENTIRE BIO

Mike Lazar had a fun two weeks here on the Expert Answer Center in August. I know he did because he told me over dinner (see his Aug. 5 post). And, to be honest, I think he played with us all -- just a bit. So let's play back, shall we?

As you may have noticed, Mike took the titles of his blog entries from movies. Somehow each of the titles makes perfect sense when you read the corresponding entry. I thought we'd make a contest out of it -- the person who matches up the most quotations with the correct movie wins a free copy of Exam Cram 2: Lotus Notes and Domino 6 System Administrator by Tony Aveyard and Karen Fishwick. The book is designed for those who have proven experience with Notes client and Domino server and are now ready to take the three exams required to become an IBM Certified Professional.

Mike told me to tell you that his quotations may not be exactly correct, word for word. But the guy's got a pretty good memory, so I think they're probably awfully close to being right. In the event of a tie in this contest, I'll pick a name out of a hat, virtually speaking.

If you want to go the extra mile (and maybe avoid a tie-breaker or endear yourself to me in case I do have to pick a name), name the actor who uttered the quote and/or their character's name.

To make things easier for you, you can copy and paste the following list into your e-mail to me.

• And only a numbskull thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about.

• Well, folks it's time to call it a night...You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

• Tommy! You went over the cliff! Airbags...And the car was on fire! Sprinklers in the back.

• I don't remember your name, but your...fez...is familiar

• What do we have? We've got ourselves one heavily armored recreational vehicle!

• Look! It's here! And it's real!...OK…So, now what do we do?

• I'm gonna have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday as well…uh…yeah…

• It's easy to grin, when your ship comes in…

• Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.

• You say Elvis is dead? Not true, he just went to his home planet…

• What do you think of this jacket? Puh-leaz. That is so five minutes ago...

-- Dana
Posted by Dana McCurley Well, folks it's time to call it a night...You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
13 AUG 2004 06:00 EDT (10:00, GMT)
I'd like to thank everyone for the questions over the past two weeks. It's been great getting all of your feedback, and I've certainly learned a few things from you. Hopefully you've learned a few from me as well. What I hope I really did, though, is make you think about your environment and how you can make it better.

Domino is the best collaborative solution out there. Believe me, it's my job to help my company sell and manage solutions. I deal with Domino, Exchange, Sun and others. In a green field scenario, Lotus Domino is the ideal solution when looking at TCO, scalability, reliability, security and flexibility. Nothing else is close. So keep that in mind the next time you're asked, "Why don't we run Exchange and Outlook?" You can tell them that you don't want to take a step back. You'd rather look to the future and use the best tools available; one with a well laid roadmap for its future.

Take care! I'll see you on SearchDomino.com!
Posted by Mike Lazar Tommy! You went over the cliff! Airbags...And the car was on fire! Sprinklers in the back.
12 AUG 2004 08:14 EDT (12:14, GMT)
Quick blog today. One thing that cannot be stressed enough is the inherent security and redundancy available with Domino. I have architected systems that utilized clustering, transactional logging, encryption, etc. to keep data secure and available all of the time. I can think of one system where we ran clustered servers over a private Ethernet line between sites. Transactional logging was running on both machines, and the servers were large IBM servers running AIX with storage on SANs. Needless to say, this wasn't a cheap solution. On the other hand, we had two years of dial-tone e-mail service for 8,000 users. Never was there a time where both servers were offline. You'd be hard pressed to be able to say that about any other collaborative application.

The beauty of Domino is that you don't need to spend huge amounts of money to get these benefits. Clustering and transactional logging work well on smaller, Intel-based machines, as well. You don't need to be a PhD to operate the systems, either. Once they are set up, clustering and transactional logging just work. There is very little day-to-day maintenance needed. I know it seems like I have spent a lot of time talking about scalability, translogs and other features, but they are what separates Domino from the competition. You cannot stress enough the value of a highly scalable, secure, redundant system that is always on and doesn't get attacked by every virus written.

My time in the EAC is almost up! If you have any questions, please submit by Friday!
Posted by Mike Lazar I don't remember your name, but your...fez...is familiar
11 AUG 2004 06:00 EDT (10:00, GMT)
Ah, naming conventions for products. You don't really think about it until something changes. For years I dealt with explaining what Sametime and Quickplace were to people. It seemed simple to me that the name of Sametime should be Lotus Instant Messaging and Quickplace should be…well, there was nothing short and sweet to sum it up. But certainly something could be more descriptive than Quickplace. That being said, the names grew on me. Then IBM went and pulled the old switch-er-roo. Sametime became IBM Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing, and Quickplace became IBM Team Workplace. Well, it's been quite a while, and I still call them Sametime and Quickplace. I guess old habits die hard. If you haven't taken a look at the products since the name change, I suggest you do. Much like the vast improvements in Domino 6.5, IBM IM and IBM TW are far superior to their previous incarnations.

TW 6.5 Server supports several operating systems now for scalability. It is fully LDAP-compliant and can plug into most LDAP directories. There is also Mozilla support for clients and Office 2003 integration. If you need a quick, disposable, user-manageable ad-hoc space, IBM TW 6.5 is worth a look.

Much of the press has gone to IBM IM 6.5 and its integration into the 6.5.1 server/client suite. The integrated presence awareness is fabulous if you need to collaborate in real time with several people. If you go with the full-blown IM product for Web conferencing, file sharing and the like, you have an enormously scalable and bandwidth-friendly tool at your disposal. Again, with complete LDAP integration and enhanced reverse proxy capabilities, you can deploy a public IBM IM and WC 6.5.1 server quickly and securely. Mozilla support is also available for IM and WC, so IBM's stance as technology agnostic again comes to the forefront.

So if it's been a while, take the new products out for a test drive. Whatever you want to call them, the fact remains that they are invaluable tools to the people who use them.

There's still time to get your questions answered! Please send in any questions or comments you have! I'll be taking questions until this coming Friday (Aug. 13).
Posted by Mike Lazar What do we have? We've got ourselves one heavily armored recreational vehicle!
10 AUG 2004 07:00 EDT (11:00, GMT)
I often get pulled into discussions of TCO, ROI and all of those other fun acronyms in regards to Domino vs. Exchange. Proponents of both sides have stories and studies to back up their claims and can talk until you feel your head swimming. In the end, it really boils down to what you need and what you do. If you simply use the system for e-ail, especially in smaller companies, Exchange will most likely be cheaper. Then again, I could put you on Sun/iPlanet for about 1/10 the cost of either solution, if all you want is mail.

There are service providers who will give you close to enterprise-class SLAs with anti-spam and antivirus for under $2/user. That's tough to beat. However, they aren't giving you a Ferrari, they are giving you a Geo Metro. The true value of your Lotus Domino investment comes from its scalability, its inherent security (XP SP2 came out the other day, specifically to try and address the myriad security concerns in Windows) and its versatility. If you are only using Domino for e-mail, you're taking the RV to the campground but sleeping in a tent and not using the kitchen, bathroom or satellite connection on the roof.

Lotus Domino is the best product available for workflow applications. Out of the box you can have an application running in minutes with approval cycles, limited access and notifications. On any other platform, the development cycle for that is weeks, at best. Couple the fantastically simple and rapid development capabilities of Domino with its security and replication functions, and you have the ability to secure information and get it to remote staff with very little pain, trouble or concern. That is something that is often overlooked when performing cost analysis. Capital is easy to account for in a TCO study. So are help desk calls and infrastructure support. What is harder to accurately portray in TCO is the cost of compromised data (lost laptops, intercepted transmissions, etc.), projected upgrade costs (Is it rip and replace or a simple migration?) and scalability costs (What happens if we add 500 people?). It is these arenas where Domino truly separates itself from all other products.

So, if you aren't taking full advantage of Domino's capabilities, get out of the tent and get moving on it today. If you are already using Domino for more than e-mail, then you are well adjusted to life at the back of the RV, relaxing in your comfortable chair, with your favorite beverage in hand and DirecTV beaming into your campground.
Posted by Mike Lazar Look! It's here! And it's real!...OK…So, now what do we do?
09 AUG 2004 06:00 EDT (10:00, GMT)
Well, you finally got your wish, and it is time to upgrade the hardware to newer and better configurations. You want to implement transactional logging and incremental backups, but how do you make sure everything is going to work properly when it is turned on? Transactional logging takes significant planning and resources. I'll outline a few basics, but this is a very complex topic. It can get so granular that I actually give a 60+ slide presentation on it at the Admin 2004 conferences.

To outline some general details…Make sure you have proper hardware! Translogging can improve performance, but only if properly configured. This means OS and executables on mirrored drives on their own controller channels. Translog extents on another set of drives, on their own channel. Data in a RAID 5 array on its own channel(s). Also, make sure you have enough power to handle the new load. Transactional logging does take significant CPU to run, especially on a busy mail server.

Your second concern is for backups. Chances are, your existing backup solution is not going to be compatible with archive-style transactional logging, or you will need to purchase an upgrade to handle it. Archive translogging lets you take actual incrementals, by only backing up the log extents. You take a full backup once a week and incrementals daily. The savings in media can be astounding compared to the standard daily fulls of non-translogged systems. This only scratches the surface of the entire process. I honestly can (and will) talk for hours on this topic. The details involved in planning a well run translogged system is amazing. For more details, catch me in Copenhagen or Paris this autumn.
Posted by Mike Lazar I'm gonna have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday as well…uh…yeah…
06 AUG 2004 06:00 EDT (10:00, GMT)
Do more with less. Work smarter, not harder. Get that TPS report in on time. Don't miss your meeting with the Bobs. We've all heard these from management (well, maybe not the TPS report and Bobs, but something similar, certainly). How do we work smarter? We use smarter software.

This is where using new features of Domino 6.5 will help you. In D6, policies make setup and maintenance of client settings almost painless. It's a far cry from setup profiles, which had zero capabilities post installation/setup. The ability to use server-based rules saves your users from having to maintain the same rule in every mail file. Short on space? Want to have simple template upgrades? How about better performance for Web users? Single-copy template is your friend. On a 1,000 user server, you can save over 12 GB with single-copy templates in effect. Template changes/upgrades now only affect one file, the template, instead of every mail file. Also, the form caching helps improve DWA speed. Speaking of DWA, it is vastly superior to iNotes. Encryption capabilities, cleaner interface, more customizable, the list is endless.

Is your network team saying Domino is the pig of all pigs on the WAN? D6 packet loading is more intelligent than R5. Packets are transmitted more efficiently and in a better flow-controlled manner. This means less Domino bursting and a smoother utilization of bandwidth. Couple that efficiency with the LZ1 compression in D6, and your WAN team will have to find a new whipping boy.

Need to work faster with colleagues? Sounds like integrated Sametime Instant Messaging could be of assistance.

I could go on and on, but you all have jobs outside of reading blog entries. It's time to wrap this episode up for the day. Check back in next time. Again, keep those questions coming! If I don't answer it right away, that means I have to do a little research. It might take a day or two. If I can't answer your query (especially those script questions; not my forte…), I'll do what I can to get it to one of the SearchDomino.com experts.

Non-Domino blog topic…I travel a lot. I have a pair of Phillips over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones, and they are very nice. Unfortunately, they are bulky, and the sound is only good. Not great, but good. I just got a pair of Shure E3c ear-bud headphones. They don't "turn on" white noise like most noise-canceling headphones, they simply fit like earplugs to drown out the excess noise. All I can say is: "Wow." The sound is amazing; exactly what you would expect from Shure. They have far superior sound to the Bose, which I had at one time. If you fly a lot, ride the train to work or have small children (say, two boys -- ages 5 and 2 -- but your situation may differ…), I suggest you run and get a pair of these. They are fabulous.

Have a great weekend! That is, unless, um…yeah…you need to come in on Saturday. Oh…and um…we'll need you to come in on Sunday as well…yeah…OK? Great.
Posted by Mike Lazar It's easy to grin, when your ship comes in…
05 AUG 2004 00:52 EDT (04:52, GMT)
I'll keep this one short. I just wanted to comment on the market yesterday. As some of you know, Lotus sales were up last year about 12%. I think the financial freeze we have been in for the past few years is over. While we aren't back to the heydays of the late '90s, things are looking up. One area that is certainly seeing a lot of spending is e-mail/collaboration. If you are a Domino professional and you've been contemplating a career change, I would suggest holding off on that. Many companies have not upgraded systems since 1999, and development was halted in 2002-2003. Budgets are now opening up, and projects are rolling. There is work to be found, and many of my recruiting friends are reporting a large upswing in availabilities. So, for any of you feeling down and out, pick your head up and get looking. Jobs are opening up.

On a side note, I am in Boston today. I got to have dinner last night with the wonderful associate editor for the Expert Answer Center, Dana McCurley. She has done a great job with the site, and she deserves to be recognized for all of her efforts. So, from everyone out there, "Thanks, Dana!" Not to mention she has a fabulous smile and she's way cool, to boot.
Posted by Mike Lazar Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.
04 AUG 2004 14:40 EDT (18:40, GMT)
One of the biggest drivers in today's messaging world is cost. Messaging is now to the point where it is as mission-critical as any application, and it is also looked upon as a commodity, like the network. One method of reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) is to consolidate servers. Back in 1999-2000, having servers at every site was certainly normal -- and usually required. Systems simply couldn't scale well into managing thousands of users. However, today's hardware and software (Domino 6.5 on an AIX server, for example) can easily scale into the tens of thousands of users. The big push today is to take the existing 100 servers at 70 sites and bring it down to 10 servers at two sites. This is a great way to reduce costs associated with hardware, software, maintenance, support, real estate, etc. The one piece that is often overlooked is the network. Network costs will go up, and many companies often fail to properly size the pipes from the remote sites to the new servers.

It is obvious that response time is going to suffer when you compare virtually any pipe you put in for the new remote sites to the previous LAN access the site use to have. However, setting expectations can alleviate some of the pain. Once your users understand the reasons behind the delay, they often are willing to accept it. After that, all you have to do is make sure that you have the minimum amount of bandwidth allocated for messaging (the baseline to keep sessions open and alive, per se) as well as enough additional bandwidth to ensure a decent "quality of life" for your users. Looking at statistics you should be able to tell the average size of a message (usually around 10 KB). Then, look to see how many people send 20 KB, 100 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB etc., messages. Determine the acceptable length of time someone has to wait for that message to be sent and received. Based on that number, you should be able to extrapolate how much "extra" bandwidth you will need to keep your users from revolting.

Another method to help keep costs down in this scenario would be replication. If bandwidth is too expensive, you can switch your users at a site to replication mode. Using ND6 compression and improved replication schemes, the users should feel very comfortable working in an "offline" mode.

Finally, don't get completely caught up in the consolidation hype. The best solution is often a balance of your options. Cost/benefit analysis will often show that it is not optimal to get down to one or two sites. You may see your lowest TCO is highly centralized environment, not a completely centralized one.

Again, keep the questions coming! I'll answer them as quickly as possible.
Posted by Mike Lazar You say Elvis is dead? Not true, he just went to his home planet…
03 AUG 2004 05:49 EDT (09:49, GMT)
Well, I wasn't going to blog about this topic because it has been beat up pretty well the past few weeks by many of my friends in the Domino community, but an event today has changed my mind. A recent report by a research firm (I won't even dignify the report by naming them here) that has lost virtually all of its credibility with many IT professionals stated that the Lotus Domino roadmap was not clear and that the Microsoft Exchange roadmap was far clearer. It further stated that Workplace would erode the Domino install base and companies would turn to Exchange.

Now, debate this all you want, but the fact that they said Domino was going away was just very poor analysis. Complaining that Domino has upgrades and releases every year seemed foolish, but then stating that IBM would lose the seat count battle showed the lack of detail that went into the study. Research firms abandoned counting seats as a method of showing market share at least four years ago. Revenue is the measure they use because every person who owned a copy of Outlook (part of Office for many home users) was counted as an Exchange seat. When you look at revenue, Domino is ahead of Exchange for the business e-mail market.

The reason I bring this up is to tell you that Notes/Domino is not dead. How do I know this? Because Ed Brill says so. In fact, Ed has just taken a new job inside IBM Lotus overseeing the sales of Notes/Domino worldwide. With Domino 7 in Beta 2 (it is awesome, BTW), Domino 8 in planning stages (fully committed to by IBM) and high-level talk of Domino 9 (again, mentioned publicly), Domino is here for the long haul. You will have choices. Some may choose to move to Workplace. Many will stay on the Notes/Domino path. However, the key is you will have that choice. Unlike other packages, you can get IBM collaboration tools (note, this isn't JUST a messaging product) in many colors. Other vendors will sell you their messaging tools in any color you want, as long as it is the one color they have available.

Two years ago, you might have been able to stir the pot and get people (including me) to contemplate the end of life of Domino. With the release of 6.5, Domino 7 in beta, Domino 8 and 9 on the horizon and Ed in charge, I see Domino with a bright future. Certainly brighter than the future of its primary e-mail competitor and most definitely brighter than the recently discredited research firm that wrote the poorly researched study.

Thanks for letting me rant! Keep the questions coming, and I'll check in again tomorrow.

-- Mike
Posted by Mike Lazar What do you think of this jacket? Puh-leaz. That is so 5 minutes ago...
02 AUG 2004 06:00 EDT (10:00, GMT)
I'm a techno-geek at heart, and I have to say that I think Domino 6.5 is fantastic. The improvements over R5 are so numerous and wonderful you could justify upgrades 10x over. That being said, Domino 7 has really got my blood going. Sure, there are tons of great improvements including better spam protection (whitelisting, rules, etc.); a smoother, cleaner UI; an autosaving feature (it's about time!); smart tags -- the list goes on and on. In fact, you can find the list here. However, the most important feature, IMHO, is the ability to use DB2 as your backend store. This is the Holy Grail for developers who have tried to make Domino do relational functions for the past 10 years. This ability to do joins in views has friends of mine almost giddy. The scalability (never a problem before, but -- come on -- bigger is better…) is almost off the charts. The beta is more stable than many production software packages that I use on a daily basis. The speed at which your extremely large databases will now function is amazing. Where you used to do tricks to split the data or create many databases, you can now make one all encompassing file. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

What's that you say? You don't run DB2, nor do you plan on using it? Well, this is where I go out on a limb (albeit a short one, I hope). IBM has always prided itself on having its e-mail/collaboration suite run on several platforms, unlike other products. My guess is that IBM's technology agnostic stance will continue on the backend store, as well. I would be very surprised if Oracle and SQL were not backend store options within a few point releases of the initial D7 launch. Maybe my friends at IBM will be willing to confirm/deny this hypothesis off the record.

Thanks for checking in with me. Keep those questions coming!
Posted by Mike Lazar