Update from yesterday's Open Mic Call on Daylight Savings Time

If you did not get a chance to attend yesterday's Open Mic Call on Daylight Savings Time, a couple of questions were asked from folks who weren't 100% on whether they were "all set" or not for this year's DST changes (in the US, specifically).

As a general rule of thumb, if you did all your patching correctly last year and had no issues, you should not have any issues this year. IBM/Lotus recommended on the call that whenever possible it's always best practice to keep up to date on the latest maintenance release of your specific code stream. For any international organization, be sure that you have also patched your users/servers outside the US. Any country-specific technotes on DST you can find on the knowledge collection on DST (link below).

They indicated that 656, 7.0.3 and 8.0.1 should be all set as far as patches go. Be sure to check out the Knowledge Collection on Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Notes/Domino and Maintenance Releases, Fix Packs and Additional Fixes for Lotus Domino and Notes.

Overheard on Twitter

"exchange is to email as my dog is to the lawn."

Wanna have some fun and get a few good laughs?

Start following "exchange" and "outlook" on twitter :-)

These are my favorites for today:

"Now my work PC Outlook is complaining about ActiveX controls when I want to reply to a missed... wtf?! Wonder if I got an ActiveX virus?"

"can cloud computing help when exchange servers going belly up?"

"Have I mentioned recently how much I hate Exchange? Just to install the Mgmt Tools I had to install IIS and 3 more subtools...."

And let's not leave Apple Mail out :-)

"Removing stupid mail options. Apple Mail thinks a dozen msgs from the Exchange server are junk. Bad Apple Mail! Bad! On to System Prefs!"

Ah..the joy of having a heck of a stable platform and a redesigned client UI :-)

Update Feb 23: Here are some additional ones:

"Fearing the worst -- that I might have to shift to MS Outlook for my email."

"Microsoft Exchange server sucks... oh wait... it is a Microsoft product... that explains it."

"Thinking about trying out Thunderbird... I've lived in Outlook WAY too long. I need something new. Suggestions? (On Windows...) :)"

"Consulting for someone on their Exchange installation right now. It reminds me of the reason why our company uses Google Apps for our mail."

"Fixing a broken Exchange migration is why I make the big bucks. Just kidding. No really, it is. :-)"

Update Feb. 25:

(sallyt): I loathe Outlook Web Access. It has the functionality of a rock. Actually less.

(coffeemick): @tobetop Outlook ist Usability-frei

(luizguelfi): tentando abrir o Outlook...e tá difícil

girliegeek): Outlook is such a POS (that's Piece of Sh*t in case you were wondering)

(esjewett): Auspicious start to the week: client's Outlook over VPN is borked. Predicted helpdesk answer is, "Use web interface." Productivity nirvana!

(socgirl): And now I am melting Outlook. It does not help to be on a slooooooow network. So glad to be done with this job soon.

(sillyevar): tried switching to outlook from Thunderbird and LMAO. The Junk mail features were 1997, not 2007. Back to TBird for me.

(thisboyelroy): Outlook exchange is the dumbest thing ever to happen to email.

(mikemorrow): Always a Monday bonus to find your entire Outlook profile was blown away by "maintenance" over the wknd. Hooray for backup.

(FrankSchuil): Optimizing my Outlook 2007 , because it's far too slow.

(Eyebee): Outlook is a pain in the posterior.

(sallyt): Outlook web access is for the boids!

(mercurystate): Why is Outlook so slow?

(Caymon): annoyed at our slow exchange server

(thowland): I continue to be amazed at how poor Outlook's HTML rendering is. Here I thought it was IE7 under the hood... it's actually much much worse.

(binderodaemons): so sick of Outlook and Exchange and it's not even lunch time

It's *THAT* time of the year, again...

Yes, for those in North America (or in my case, who administer servers in the Northern Hemisphere), Daylight Savings Time is creeping up on us again.

To be better prepared, IBM will be hosting this coming February 27 a second Notes/Domino Open Mic Session this month to discuss all things DST:

IBM will host an Open Mic conference call with Lotus Development and Support Engineers to answer your questions about DST issues in Lotus Notes/Domino® on Wednesday, February 27, 2008.
Title: Notes and Domino: Daylight Saving Time
Date: February 27, 2008
Time: 10:00 am Eastern US time

Questions can be posted in advance of the call as a response to the Invitation to Notes/Domino DST Open Mic call in the Notes/Domino 8 forum.

DST in the United States is scheduled to start on March 9 and end on November 2.

Link: Notes/Domino Open Mic special session for upcoming Daylight Saving Time transition

Additional resources:

Notes/Domino Open Mic conference call: Impact of Daylight Saving Time changes
Knowledge Collection: Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Notes/Domino

Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.5 on Domino 8.0 webcast Q&A

Just attended a webcast today on the new Service Pack 5 to Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1, which will be adding support for Domino 8.0. It was good to hear Valerie Wang from RIM talk about the new features, and as every Product Manager will do, she did not commit to any release dates, but said "it's a matter of weeks, not months." Hmm... doesn't that sound familiar? ;-)

So anyways, BES 4.1.5 now will add support for Windows 2003 64-bit. This led me to a few questions which Valerie answered in the Q&A session after her presentation:

1. Will BES 4.1.5 support Lotus Domino 8.0.1 on Windows 2003 Server 64-bit?
   No. BES 4.1.5 will only support 32-bit Domino 8.0 and 7.0.3. Support for Lotus Domino 8.0.1 will come in a future service pack.
   
2. Is BES 4.1.5 64-bit enabled?
   No, it still runs as a 32-bit app. Work is being done to port BES to 64-bit, but nothing is ready to be discussed in public yet. Valerie mentioned that if ISVs/Customers/anyone would like to get further details on this, then this can be discussed individually via a signed NDA.
3. How many simultaneous users will BES 4.1.5 support on 64-bit Windows 2003 Server?
   RIM is still estimating around 2,000 users/BES server, but work is being done to improve performance further.

Blackberry Enterprise Server Scalability
Also another good tip on Blackberry Enterprise Server scalability given by the folks at RIM:

• To increase scalability, decrease the amount of mail servers your BES talks to - the more mail servers you point your BES servers to, the less it will scale.
  
• Keep your BES server as close to your mail servers as possible - try to keep your corporate/headquarter mail servers on the same datacenter as your BES server. The fewer network hops, the better.

Interesting to hear Valerie mention how few people at Lotusphere were aware of these 2 performance/scalability tips.

The PDF slides from the webcast are available for download.

Tudo (ou quase!) o que você precisa saber pra atualizar para Lotus Notes/Domino 8.0.1

A IBM oficialmente lançou hoje a mais nova versão do Lotus Notes e Lotus Domino Server: 8.0.1. Para que você tenha em um local fácil todas as informações necessárias para avaliar e preparar melhor para o upgrade desta versão, vale a pena dar uma olhada no technote 1294941 - Upgrade Central: Planning your upgrade to Lotus Notes / Domino 8.0.1.

Uma nova novidade no Lotus Domino 8.0.1 é suporte para plataformas 64-bits (Windows Server e IBM AIX).

E não deixem de ler o Release Notes à cada nova versão do produto para estar dentro de todas as informações/problemas/soluções encontradas no produto!

Link: Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, and Lotus Domino Designer Release Notes

Passos para preparar o Notes/Domino para o horário de verão do Brasil (2007/2008)

Apenas como referência já que o horário de verão acabou nesse domingo passado, que é a mesma data da última atualização do technote 1283013 Steps to prepare Notes/Domino for Brazil (Brasil) 2007/2008 Daylight Saving Time changes.

Service Pack 2 do Windows Server 2003 afeta negativamente servidores Lotus Domino e Sametime

A IBM publicou recentemente o technote 1295167 - Domino and Sametime performance issues traced to Windows Server 2003 Scalable Networking Pack. Se você está observando problemas de performance com seus servidores Domino ou Sametime após aplicar o Service Pack 2 do Windows 2003, siga as instruções contidas no technote para solucionar esse problema:

The following will resolve the problem:

1. Disable SNP features in accordance with Microsoft's instructions. Note that Registry edits may be required. See Microsoft article 912222 for details.

2. Ensure that the server's NIC does not enable TCP off-loading (which may be labeled "TCO", "TCP Chimney Offload," or "TCP Checksum Offload.")

3. The following Windows Registry Key can be Disabled to turn off the Chimney Offload feature:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip
\Parameters\EnableTCPChimney

via Notes from Lotus Support.

¿Hablas Español? IBM Lotus Domino Tech Exchange webcast: NSD para Administradores (in Spanish)

IBM Lotus is holding this coming Wednesday, February 21 another IBM Lotus Domino Tech Exchange webcast, pero ahora en español:

Le invitamos a participar en una sesión SIN COSTO de transferencia de conocimiento presentada en castellano por el grupo de Soporte Técnico Lotus para Latinoamérica (LATAM)
Content
¿Está interesado en conocer más sobre el uso de NSD para analizar su ambiente de Lotus Domino/Notes? Ha envíado los archivos NSD*.log a Soporte Técnico cuando hay problemas de rendimiento o caídas. Ha visto que un NSD*.log se crea automáticamente y también sabe cómo generarlos manualmente. ¿Está interesado en su contenido? Si así es, por favor únase a la conferencia:
La presentación será en español, seguida de preguntas y respuestas

• ¿Qué es el NSD?
• Secciones principales en un NSD
• ¿Cómo analizar NSDs?
• Mejores prácticas: Solución de problemas.
• Contactando a soporte técnico Lotus.

Día: 21 de Febrero de 2008
Hora: 9:30 AM hora central de EEUU (CST), (10:30 AM EST, 7:30 AM PST)
Duración: 1.5 horas

Great to see IBM/Lotus reaching out to its Latin American customers in its native languages, as well as spanish speakers worldwide. Really looking forward to additional webcasts em português from the LATAM team that is based out of Austin.

Link: IBM Lotus Domino Tech Exchange webcast: NSD para Administradores