You might have already seen that in 8.0.1 on many error messages there is a new button to “Search Technotes” 
This is a new feature to Notes 8.0.1, activated for error messages that have been cited most frequently by customers for previous Notes client releases.
Well if you want to you can disable this feature by adding “DoNotShowDetailsButton=1” to the clients note.ini. Technote 1290053 Search IBM Technotes’ button in certain Notes 8.0.1 error dialogs
The doctor finally called this morning with the MRI results telling me what I have known for a week already, my scaphoid is broken. I have the following choices now, the first is to let them put a cast on, the cast they want to put on would look like this 
It all started as a simple school assignment
Students in a University of Michigan biology project had been assigned to grow herbs, vegetables, annuals and perennials.
Until……
The Ann Arbor News reports 11 small green plants believed to be marijuana were seized from a greenhouse in the school’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens
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In Part 1 I covered an overview of the components required to implement Lotus Connections. This post will focus on Websphere Application Server (WAS) and considerations for deploying WAS for Lotus Connections. Remember WAS is available for many different platforms, in fact more platforms then Lotus Connections is supported on, so make sure you check the Lotus Connections Software requirements when selecting a platform for WAS Start with some basic WAS terminology Node – a Node is basically on installation of WAS which can contain many profiles, and many applications Cell – a Cell is a group of nodes Cluster – logical grouping of applications for redundancy and load balancing, a Cell can contain more then one cluster. Profile – not to be confused with the Lotus Connections Profiles service, this is a Websphere term, with one instance of WAS you can create multiple profiles, each profile becomes it’s own application serving environment. For Lotus Connections while you can install multiple services per node, it is recommended that they each be in their own profile. To put that in English, when you install Lotus Connections you install each service individually so if you are installing Blogs, and Dogear you will run the Lotus Connections install twice, and it is recommended that you create a separate profile for each service. Deployment Manager (DM) – the deployment manager is used to manage the cluster, and can manage more then one cluster. Once your cluster is up and running the DM is only used when making configuration changes. It is not a critical component to the working of the application, and users can access the application even if the DM is not up and running. WAS requires 930 MB of space to install, this is for the actual installation, you will need additional space for the creation of Profiles, and the Lotus Connections install. The Connections install is listed at 110 MB for all 5 services, and a newly created profile is 40 MB, so size your disk appropriately, and leave yourself some room to spare. Remember once it is all up and running log files will get written to this file system as well, WAS does a good job of letting you cap log size and overwrite them, but leave your self some space in case you need to debug a problem. The default directories for the WAS Install are AIX – /usr/IBM/WebSphere/ Linux – /opt/IBM/WebSphere/ Windows – C:Program FilesIBMWebSphere (when working on windows my preference is to always drop the “program files” portion of the path, makes things much easier) Now on to considerations for sizing, and how many services to run per WAS Node. There is no question you can run all five Connections services on one node, but you have to look at your anticipated number of users and the concurrency rate you expect, in addition your decision to implement or not to implement caching proxies, will make a big difference on the load you WAS Server can expect. You can also move some of the static content (css files, Javascript files, images, etc) from WAS to the HTTP server as detailed in this article, further reducing the load on WAS. I am currently running all 5 services on a 4 CPU 4GB Memory VM Ware partition running windows 2003, while the load is currently light, the hardware clearly has room to handle quite a bit more. I will be implementing caching proxies, and the running some load tests to determine the extent they reduce load on WAS, and how far I can scale. The other consideration of course is redundancy, which of course will require more hardware, but that is no different then any other application, if high availability is important to you, the cost is worth it. You will need a duplicate of whatever you sized for your environment as well as hardware for a Deployment Manager, the DM does not require too much horsepower, and is used to create the clusters, and manage them. The DM does not need to be up for users to access Connections, so you can decide to back it up, and not have a redundant DM. There are other considerations for clustering, in addition to the data stored in the database, the Connections services need some file systems available to maintain some data (more on this coming in Part 3) in a clustered environment this data needs to be available and shared between both nodes of the cluster. Steps for installing WAS, and preparing for the Lotus Connections install 1. Install WAS or WAS ND 2. Install the WAS Update Installer 3. Install the required WAS Fixes for Connections 4. Create profiles for each service you plan on installing. If you run the graphical Profile Management Tool, if you select Advanced Profile Creation you can name the profile otherwise it will be the default AppSrvr format, I have been naming my profiles to match the service which will be installed on it (i.e blogs, dogear, etc..) to make it easier to keep track of them. 
So quite the coincidence I spent most of today planning and sizing a production environment for Lotus Connections, and planned on blogging about it, at the same time Yancy Lent of Planet Lotus fame was curious (yes he actually used the word curiosity so I had to answer him 🙂 ) What does it take to implement Lotus Connections. So I hope this helps answer the question. If you are just looking to get exposed to the functionality of Lotus Connections there is a Pilot Install available, the pilot install will handle the WAS, DB2 and Lotus Connections install with a simple wizard. I posted about the pilot install when it was introduced in 1.0.1. The install is easy, you will be up and running in 30-60 minutes depending on the machine you install it on, and you can test drive connections. The pilot install does not include the HTTP server so you have to include the port number in the URL, not a big deal for a test drive. In addition conversion of a pilot install to production is supported. Moving on to a production install, I will address each component and it’s requirements, I am not going to cover LDAP here as most organizations already have their LDAP directory in place, and will use the existing directory for Connections. (supported LDAP Servers are Domino 7.0.2 or later, Tivoli Directory Server 6.0.0.3, Sun Java System Directory 5.2, or Microsoft Active Directory 2003) Websphere Application Server (WAS) – The five Lotus Connections services are Websphere applications so the first task is to install Websphere, note that there are two versions of websphere WAS or WAS Network Deployment, (WAS ND) if you are planning on doing clustering you must use the WAS ND Installer. You can install Websphere on Windows 2003 (Standard or Enterprise), Red Hat ES 4, SUSE Enterprise 10 Server, or AIX 5.3.0.4 or later. The installation of Websphere takes anywhere from 20 minutes or longer depending on your hardware. You also need to install the WAS Update Installer, and install the Required Fixes, I would plan 2 hours to get Websphere and all the patches installed. Database – There are three supported Databases, DB2 9.1, Oracle 10g or MS SQL 2005 Enterprise (note should you go the SQL Route you need to use Windows 2003 Enterprise not standard for both the DB as well as WAS). In a production environment it is recommended that the DB Server be on separate hardware from WAS. Remember you will be creating 5 databases one for each feature. I would suggest the following guide to selecting a database platform, if you have any one of the supported databases in your organization already, and a dedicated team of DBA’s who manage it, go with that and nicely convince them to create and manage your databases. If you don’t have an existing database environment, then use DB2 as you get the limited license to use it with Connections when you purchase Connections. Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) – TDI is used to populate the Profiles database, and sync data from different sources (LDAP, HR System etc) on an ongoing basis, the recommendation if possible is to install TDI on the same box as the database. At this point you have the minimum requirements you need start the actual Lotus Connections install, but…. there are some other recommended components IBM HTTP Server for WAS (IHS) – you need to install the HTTP server which is an IBM implementation of apache if you want URL’s that don’t contain port numbers when you access Lotus Connections, simply put it is the difference between a link like this “http: //myconnectionssever:9080/activites” or “http: //myconnectionserver/activities”. I would also caution you that each Connections service will have it’s own port number, so you probably want to use an HTTP server, you can map all five services to one HTTP server. Again in production you want this on a separate box then WAS or the DB. When installing IHS make sure you install the plugins for WAS. You will need an hour to install and configure IHS. Caching Proxy – it is strongly recommended to place a caching proxy in front of the IHS Server, if you have an existing caching proxy you can use that, or you can use Websphere Edge Components. This can greatly improve performance, and maximize the resources of you IHS and WAS servers. There are a few tasks left before you are ready to install Lotus Connections Database Creation, depending on your database platform the Infocenter contains instructions on creating the databases for Connections, and the scripts are contained in the install. I have created the databases on DB2, it will take you five minutes to create the databases for Activities, Blogs, Communities, and Dogear. Profiles will be a little more involved as you need to install TDI, create the database, map the fields from your directory, and then populate it from your LDAP. Depending on the size of your directory this could take a while to run. Once I had TDI configured and my fields mapped it took about 20 minutes for my database to populate 20,000 users. At this point you have some decisions to make regarding your WAS architecture, you can create multiple WAS Profiles with in one WAS installation and install each feature in it’s own profile (this is recommended and supported) or you can have multiple installations of WAS which means more hardware of course. I will talk more about how to do this and sizing in Part 2 (hopefully tomorrow). If you are looking to do a simple proof of concept install (and did not use the pilot install) you can install all 5 services in one profile, however this is not recommended for production, and if you are doing clustering will provide some serious limitations. Once you have created your WAS profiles, you need to configure Federated Repositories, this connects WAS to your LDAP directory. Congratulations you are now ready to install Lotus Connections. As you hopefully realize at this point, Lotus Connections is made up of five services (Activities, Blogs, Communities, Dogear, Profiles) each service is it’s own install so if you are planning on running all five services you will be running the installer five times. So this is Part 1, in Part 2 I will
talk about WAS and considerations for how many profiles, some more detailed requirements, and clustering. In Part 3 I will cover more on the specific requirements for each Connections feature, ,and in Part 4 I will cover more on TDI, so stay tuned for more.
If you never heard of the Scaphoid bone, well neither did I until yesterday, but the on my left wrist might be broken. This all started back on Super Bowl Sunday when I took my daughter ice skating, and took a little spill. Last week I had made an appointment to get the hand x-rayed, but the Dr. cancelled, and it was feeling better so I never rescheduled. The hand though continued to have pain, even when not being used, so yesterday I had it x-rayed. The x-ray does not show a break, but apparently x-rays can not conclusively see a break in the Scaphoid bone, so next up is an MRI on Thursday evening. For now the hand is in a splint and in a fair amount of pain, not to mention slowing down my typing quite a bit. I don’t know, going skating seemed like a good idea at the time, and Molly seemed to enjoy it, she even asked to go again this Sunday, but I am not sure how fast that is going to happen.
Welcome to two new bloggers Andy Yiu and Vineet Rohatgi (Vinny), Andy and Vinny both work at IBM in L2 Support. I have worked many Sametime PMR with them, and done quite a bit of work on the Sametime Gateway with them as well. You also might recognize Andy and Vinny from Lotusphere as they presented HND301 Deploying & Managing the IBM Lotus Sametime Connect Client. Head on over and welcome them to the community.
OK I didn’t come up with a forum post to answer today, but thought I would put this tip out there.  You can view the Lotus Fourms, and Product fix lists right in your Notes client.
This article explains how to register your notes ID, and setup your client to access the content in Notes, you can even replicate the databases locally
If you need a proxy server to access the internet don’t miss this section on configuring a proxy.
