I was given a short notice assignment this past week. The goal was
to move our cloud hosted antivirus service to an in-house
solution before the end of the month. The cloud solution was paid for until the end of July and quite expensive. The in-house solution was already bought
and paid for as part of a larger package and my task was to coordinate
efforts so that IBM Lotus Domino email would send/receive filtered mail
through the solution.
I had a couple of small issues with it.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Migrating Lotus Notes to Google Apps? No Way!
Maybe I live in my own delusional world or something.
I received an email from a vendor offering to move Lotus Notes customers to the cloud. They showcased a case study which had a client move to cloud-based Google Apps, GMail, Google Calendar and GTalk.
The client originally had 32,000 users and 6,000 applications running on 250 servers. Two hundred and fifty servers! Is that what it's like in the x86-64 world? I'm honestly not being facetious...I just don't know.
That's 38,000 applications and mail files, so about 152 total per server. No wonder the client was looking for a simpler solution.
A few years ago, IBM released some benchmark tests using it's then-current low-end System i model 520 and 4 Lotus Domino 6.0.3 servers. Here's the details:
24,000 concurrent Lotus Notes mail and calendar users.
System i model 520-8966 (2 x 1.5 GHz POWER5 processors)
32 GB memory
53 x 35GB disk drives
4 partitioned Lotus Domino 6.0.3 servers. "Partitioned" Domino on IBM i means servers running in separate subsystems, not a separate instances of the operating system.
24,000 concurrent mail and calendar users? The average response time was 92 milliseconds.
In those benchmarks, there were bigger machines taking on 175,000 concurrent mail users but I'll compare at the low-end boxes because of the large SMB install base for IBM i.
Now tell me, do you think a modern low-end IBM Power 720 Express running IBM i 7.1 with a similar configuration could handle 38,000 users concurrently with similar response times? You'd have to use bigger drives (35GB aren't produced anymore) and I'd personally double the memory, but I think it would. In fact, I bet it would. I would just love IBM to come out with some new benchmark tests using Lotus Domino 8.5.3 and modern Power7 hardware. The combination of performance improvements in both IBM i and Lotus Domino plus the new blazingly fast Power7 systems would probably blow these results out of the water.
Am I delusional? Or am I just using a solid, working solution that can scale to unmatched heights? Migrate to Google Apps? Why the heck would I do something like that?
If you're looking to leverage your existing investment in IBM, simplify management, reduce overhead/costs and consolidate your servers then you need to take a look at IBM i on Power Systems running IBM Lotus Domino. There is no better combination.
If you're looking for a cloud-based solution, IBM has one! It's called IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.
I received an email from a vendor offering to move Lotus Notes customers to the cloud. They showcased a case study which had a client move to cloud-based Google Apps, GMail, Google Calendar and GTalk.
The client originally had 32,000 users and 6,000 applications running on 250 servers. Two hundred and fifty servers! Is that what it's like in the x86-64 world? I'm honestly not being facetious...I just don't know.
That's 38,000 applications and mail files, so about 152 total per server. No wonder the client was looking for a simpler solution.
A few years ago, IBM released some benchmark tests using it's then-current low-end System i model 520 and 4 Lotus Domino 6.0.3 servers. Here's the details:
24,000 concurrent Lotus Notes mail and calendar users.
System i model 520-8966 (2 x 1.5 GHz POWER5 processors)
32 GB memory
53 x 35GB disk drives
4 partitioned Lotus Domino 6.0.3 servers. "Partitioned" Domino on IBM i means servers running in separate subsystems, not a separate instances of the operating system.
24,000 concurrent mail and calendar users? The average response time was 92 milliseconds.
In those benchmarks, there were bigger machines taking on 175,000 concurrent mail users but I'll compare at the low-end boxes because of the large SMB install base for IBM i.
Now tell me, do you think a modern low-end IBM Power 720 Express running IBM i 7.1 with a similar configuration could handle 38,000 users concurrently with similar response times? You'd have to use bigger drives (35GB aren't produced anymore) and I'd personally double the memory, but I think it would. In fact, I bet it would. I would just love IBM to come out with some new benchmark tests using Lotus Domino 8.5.3 and modern Power7 hardware. The combination of performance improvements in both IBM i and Lotus Domino plus the new blazingly fast Power7 systems would probably blow these results out of the water.
Am I delusional? Or am I just using a solid, working solution that can scale to unmatched heights? Migrate to Google Apps? Why the heck would I do something like that?
If you're looking to leverage your existing investment in IBM, simplify management, reduce overhead/costs and consolidate your servers then you need to take a look at IBM i on Power Systems running IBM Lotus Domino. There is no better combination.
If you're looking for a cloud-based solution, IBM has one! It's called IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
In The Wheelhouse: IBM i Access Client Solutions - Where Have You Been All My Life?
I have a new bi-weekly column on MC Press Online called In the Wheelhouse. It's partly an industry analysis column but I try to focus towards any IBM related news.
It's been going pretty well for the last 6 weeks but I realized I haven't mentioned it at all on my blog! With that in mind, here's links to the most recent colums. Please have a read. Especially the IBM i Access Client Solutions one as it's a great product and well worth the read if you maintain IBM i Access for Windows installations.
In The Wheelhouse: IBM i Access Client Solutions - Where Have You Been All My Life?
This week, I'll talk about the brand spanking new and overly awesome IBM i client offering and give you a lesson in risk management from Amazon's recent outage.
In the Wheelhouse: Cloud, Services, and Kicking RIM While They're Down (Again)
This week, I'm trying to make sense of what the heck is going on with Research in Motion and how it will affect BlackBerry customers. Plus, there are some new announcements on IBM SmartCloud and IBM PureSystems you need to know about.
In The Wheelhouse: Vol 1
This week we'll talk about IBM PureSystems, IBM Collaboration Solutions education, Betamax vs. IBM i, and the striking similarities between RPG and Freddy Krueger. Really.
It's been going pretty well for the last 6 weeks but I realized I haven't mentioned it at all on my blog! With that in mind, here's links to the most recent colums. Please have a read. Especially the IBM i Access Client Solutions one as it's a great product and well worth the read if you maintain IBM i Access for Windows installations.
In The Wheelhouse: IBM i Access Client Solutions - Where Have You Been All My Life?
This week, I'll talk about the brand spanking new and overly awesome IBM i client offering and give you a lesson in risk management from Amazon's recent outage.
In the Wheelhouse: Cloud, Services, and Kicking RIM While They're Down (Again)
This week, I'm trying to make sense of what the heck is going on with Research in Motion and how it will affect BlackBerry customers. Plus, there are some new announcements on IBM SmartCloud and IBM PureSystems you need to know about.
In The Wheelhouse: Vol 1
This week we'll talk about IBM PureSystems, IBM Collaboration Solutions education, Betamax vs. IBM i, and the striking similarities between RPG and Freddy Krueger. Really.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Lotus Notes Spell Checker IS correct. You just need the right language.
This is always funny. It's usually a user trying to spell something like "theatre." Lotus Notes puts a red line under the text. Then they complain that Notes can't spell and write off the spell checker as incorrect.
The culprit? Their dictionary is on English (US).
Here in Canada (and virtually everywhere else outside the US that uses a variation of English), theatre is spelled with a "re" instead of with an "er." US English spells "color" and "flavor" while we spell them "colour" and "flavour," and so on.
It's funny, I also saw someone complaining that Notes kept marking English US words as wrong, even though his language settings in Lotus Notes were in his native Dutch. Of course it is. Try finding an unmodified Dutch language spell checker in any piece of software to mark "statuatory" as correct and proper Dutch, and I'll switch to Outlook for you.
Please make sure your users are on the correct language.
The culprit? Their dictionary is on English (US).
Here in Canada (and virtually everywhere else outside the US that uses a variation of English), theatre is spelled with a "re" instead of with an "er." US English spells "color" and "flavor" while we spell them "colour" and "flavour," and so on.
It's funny, I also saw someone complaining that Notes kept marking English US words as wrong, even though his language settings in Lotus Notes were in his native Dutch. Of course it is. Try finding an unmodified Dutch language spell checker in any piece of software to mark "statuatory" as correct and proper Dutch, and I'll switch to Outlook for you.
Please make sure your users are on the correct language.
My favorite new Lotus Notes sidebar app: web based IBM i
IBM i Access for Web looks pretty good as a widget. I can get a web enabled 5250 session, create a user profile, view messages, access printer output, manage jobs and all that good stuff using a modern interface.
This morning I added it as a panel in my Lotus Notes sidebar. Now I can be even more productive within Lotus Notes!
This morning I added it as a panel in my Lotus Notes sidebar. Now I can be even more productive within Lotus Notes!
Monday, July 9, 2012
New IBM i Customers Feature
I'd like to speak with companies that have new installations of IBM i on Power Systems willing to be featured in an article. Each feature will probably be less than 300 words, so I just need a little information from you. If you're interested, please email me and I'll send you the details.
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