Conduct Your Own Health Check
September 12 2008
Having been a Notes/Domino Administrator for a number of years (and then being a consultant in ISSL for 6 years), I know how important it is to make sure your Domino environment is running well. You're constantly bombarded with questions like - do I have enough capacity? Am I utilizing the memory/cpu, etc. effectively? What things could I be "tweaking" to make the system perform better?
Often, questions like these result in discussions with consulting groups like IBM's Software Services for Lotus (ISSL) or the Lotus Field Support organization (FSS). These organizations focus on best practices and do a great job of coming on-site and giving you a detailed, thorough review of your environment and a nice report on what you could do better.
While these detailed reports are great, and should be performed on a regular basis, what about those in-between times when you just want to get an idea of where you are? What if you are a self-service kind of organization who wants to make sure you have done everything you possibly could before bringing in the experts??
Well, Domino Configuration Tuner is for you!!
In a nutshell, Domino Configuration Tuner (DCT) looks at your server settings and compares them to a pre-defined catalog of "best practices". It then generates reports that explain any differences between your settings and "best practices" and suggests changes you can make, as well as providing you with references to supporting publications that give more details about those settings.
DCT is currently available as part of the Notes/Domino 8.5 Public Beta program and is implemented as a template that is included with the Domino Administrator client install. The first "official" release of DCT will ship with Notes/Domino 8.5 and is designed to evaluate Domino 7.0 and later.
How Does it Work?
First off, DCT is a template. It's implemented as part of the Domino Administration client and does not run on the Domino server itself. On the "Server/Analysis" tab of the client, you will see the option for "Domino Configuration Tuner" in the left-hand selection outline. When you choose that, a local copy of dct.nsf will be created. Then, simply click "Run New Scan" and you are off! DCT will look at settings in server documents, the notes.ini and database advanced properties. Individual configuration settings are flagged when their values are known to cause problems. Out-of-range and unexpected values are also reported so that undefined behavior can be prevented.
What Does it Look For?
During the scan, DCT leverages a set of Rules that are based on accumulated knowledge about Domino Configuration collected from Lotus Support documents and known customer issues. In the current beta release of DCT, there are 90+ rules that are evaluated. Also, you can disable individual rules if they don't apply to you or your environment. In addition, all details about Domino, the O/S and hardware variations that apply to a configuration option are posted and the DCT rule will honor those variations. For example, the absence of an ini parameter that does not apply to Windows will not be reported when DCT is run on a Windows server. And...the great part about these rules is that they will be updated by Development and Support on a regular basis and can be "downloaded" into your client.
What Do You Do With the Report?
After DCT runs, you will receive a report that outlines any discrepancies between the rules and your configured settings. The report will outline the current setting, what server(s) it is on, and an explanation of the setting and associated "best practice". Most of the rules that are evaluated have a wiki post in the Notes/Domino wiki and DCT will point to that wiki posting in your report. In addition, the report will outline any additional references for the setting such as links to relevant documents and on-line reference material.
I think DCT is a great tool for every customer and should help answer those little "nagging" questions about your environment. There's much more to tell (like some details about some of the rules), but I'll save that for another blog post! So - what do you think? Think it could be helpful???
Often, questions like these result in discussions with consulting groups like IBM's Software Services for Lotus (ISSL) or the Lotus Field Support organization (FSS). These organizations focus on best practices and do a great job of coming on-site and giving you a detailed, thorough review of your environment and a nice report on what you could do better.
While these detailed reports are great, and should be performed on a regular basis, what about those in-between times when you just want to get an idea of where you are? What if you are a self-service kind of organization who wants to make sure you have done everything you possibly could before bringing in the experts??
Well, Domino Configuration Tuner is for you!!
In a nutshell, Domino Configuration Tuner (DCT) looks at your server settings and compares them to a pre-defined catalog of "best practices". It then generates reports that explain any differences between your settings and "best practices" and suggests changes you can make, as well as providing you with references to supporting publications that give more details about those settings.
DCT is currently available as part of the Notes/Domino 8.5 Public Beta program and is implemented as a template that is included with the Domino Administrator client install. The first "official" release of DCT will ship with Notes/Domino 8.5 and is designed to evaluate Domino 7.0 and later.
How Does it Work?
First off, DCT is a template. It's implemented as part of the Domino Administration client and does not run on the Domino server itself. On the "Server/Analysis" tab of the client, you will see the option for "Domino Configuration Tuner" in the left-hand selection outline. When you choose that, a local copy of dct.nsf will be created. Then, simply click "Run New Scan" and you are off! DCT will look at settings in server documents, the notes.ini and database advanced properties. Individual configuration settings are flagged when their values are known to cause problems. Out-of-range and unexpected values are also reported so that undefined behavior can be prevented.
What Does it Look For?
During the scan, DCT leverages a set of Rules that are based on accumulated knowledge about Domino Configuration collected from Lotus Support documents and known customer issues. In the current beta release of DCT, there are 90+ rules that are evaluated. Also, you can disable individual rules if they don't apply to you or your environment. In addition, all details about Domino, the O/S and hardware variations that apply to a configuration option are posted and the DCT rule will honor those variations. For example, the absence of an ini parameter that does not apply to Windows will not be reported when DCT is run on a Windows server. And...the great part about these rules is that they will be updated by Development and Support on a regular basis and can be "downloaded" into your client.
What Do You Do With the Report?
After DCT runs, you will receive a report that outlines any discrepancies between the rules and your configured settings. The report will outline the current setting, what server(s) it is on, and an explanation of the setting and associated "best practice". Most of the rules that are evaluated have a wiki post in the Notes/Domino wiki and DCT will point to that wiki posting in your report. In addition, the report will outline any additional references for the setting such as links to relevant documents and on-line reference material.
I think DCT is a great tool for every customer and should help answer those little "nagging" questions about your environment. There's much more to tell (like some details about some of the rules), but I'll save that for another blog post! So - what do you think? Think it could be helpful???
