My top 10 for ND 8.5 (so far)

10. Reduced I/O
9. Improved speed
8. Calendar Federation
7. Designer in Eclipse
6. XPages
5. ID Vault
4. New Mac Client
3. Improved Single Sign on
2. Improved Roaming
1. DAOS

= Exchange/Outlook killer

What's your top 10.

It's the last week to enter our "Most Fragmented" competition

We have had some fantastic entries, but keep them coming, just one week to go.

More details can be found here.

How fast does fragmentation grow (without Defrag.NSF) ?

So, you decided to defragment your Domino server, that's great! But how long is all that good work (not to mention increased performance and much faster backups) going to last? Over the last month we've conducted some testing on a busy server at one of our larger customers to demonstrate just how quickly a heavily utilised Domino server can deteriorate from a lean machine into a sluggish couch potato without Defrag.NSF running as an integrated server task, maintaining your performance.

Take a look at the results in the chart below.


Starting at Week 1, the Data drive was a complete mess, it was then defragged and Domino was left for the rest of the month to go about it's business. By the third week 50% of the fragmentation had returned, by the fourth week we were up near 70%.

Here lies the difference between Defrag.NSF and all other defragmenting tools. As an integrated Domino server task Defrag.NSF can be scheduled to run alongside other Domino maintenance tasks such as Compact and Fixup, all integrated and configured from within the Defrag.NSF Technical Settings document. In addition, Defrag.NSF can also be configured to pre-allocate contiguous free-space in your database, creating headroom for growth to help prevent scattering data to random sectors of the disk. This helps in delaying the onset of further fragmentation during write operations.

So why spend another day without this great tool on your Domino server? Go to our website, download a trial copy of Defrag.NSF and while you are there check out the “Most Fragmented Domino Server” competition we are running this month. Get your entries in for chance to win a free copy of Defrag.NSF.

SNTT - Moving to ODS48 and getting the benefits

Now that your servers are 8.02 (they are all 8.02 aren't they?) it's a really good time to upgrade the ODS (on disk structure) to ODS48. This gives a number of great benefits including database design compression and database document compression which yielded a 10-17% saving on our data.

To convert to ODS48 you need to:

Add Create_R8_Databases=1 to the Domino server's notes.ini

Then do a compact -c -n -v -f on the database(s)
Where
-n design compression
-v data compression
-f table bitmap off
-c copy style

I have added the -f option due to SPR WTUX7EEL85 which recommends turning document table optimisation off.

Now one problem with this is the compact -C is going to fragment the databases, so you should check the drive after the process and maybe run Defrag.NSF to clean it up.

Santa - I'd like my Red and Yellow books back!

I really miss Lotus red books and yellow books. The Wiki's are OK, but I'd like to suggest that it is time to end this experiment and get back to what is proven to work.

There is too much in 8.5 to digest from the Web, and some of us learn differently than others.

Maybe if you go to Lotusphere you might want to mention this.

Exterminate all duplicate attachments. Exterminate. Exterminate!

DAOS in Domino 8.5 is going to be so legendary that the feature will become the stuff of legend.

OK, so I borrowed a line from Kung Fu Panda - but I'm serious. How do I know this? Because we have been doing it for years in our Preemptive Email Vault product.

The storage savings will be enormous, there will be massive I/O reductions, and backup times will plummet. In a later blog I will do a comparison between the DAOS and the Vault, but for now get Domino 8.5 into your rollout plans.

It is a no-brainer upgrade with heaps to gain and nothing to lose.

Now for the marketing - it has good to be cool and get mind share. So here is my suggestion:



IBM, get your hands on Davros and a couple of Daleks. Then go with the punch line - "Exterminate all duplicate attachments. Exterminate. Exterminate!"

Should a sales person get recognition for maintenance renewals ?

A friend works in sales for a well established company and he told me that he does not get recognition for maintenance renewals. Obviously he focuses on new business because that's he's job. The expectation is that maintenance income just comes in - but does it?

Is this really a good strategy ? Isn't a bird in the hand worth two in the bush !

Is this common practice out there ? Let me know what you think.

Only two weeks left to enter our "Most Fragmented" competition

Come on, don't be shy! We know it's a mess out there.

All the details can be found here.

A Poll - What does compact -b do ?

Without looking at the Admin help, have a go at our Poll on the left. We'd love to know what the common belief of a compact -b is.

Reward - For information leading to the arrest of the Planets most Fragmented Domino Server

We had an awesome response to Defrag.NSF with our introductory offer, so we'd like to thank those customers and everyone who gave us great feedback and suggestions, some of which we have already implemented in the latest version.

Our self-appointed mission now, is to track down the most fragmented Domino server on the planet and restore it to a thing of beauty, so to have a bit of fun, we've decided to run a competition in which entrants can send us a screen-shot showing the fragmentation analysis on their Domino data drive. The rules are simple, send us the screen-shot and the entrant with the most fragmented Domino data drive on the planet will receive a free 12 month Defrag.NSF license for that server so that it can be returned to it's former glory and maintained in that condition.

To produce the analysis go to: Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter, then select your Domino server's data drive and click the "Analyze" button. Once the analysis runs send us a screen-shot of the details under the "File Fragmentation" section as shown below in red:













To enter, please send a screenshot as detailed above, your Company name and your email address to: defrag@preemptive.com.au

Get your entries in now and Good Luck!

Please Note the following conditions:- The closing date for submissions is 30 November 2008 5:00pm EDT. Entry judging by Preemptive Consulting will be final and no correspondence will be entered into. The winner will be announced on Preemptive's blog and notified by email on the 1 December 2008. Valid for Windows 2003 32bit Domino Servers only.

The sun appears brighter this afternoon - thank you America

It is already tomorrow in Australia, the Sun is up, and I can confirm that things are already brighter.

Top stuff.

Version 1.22 of Defrag.NSF just released.

Base on community feedback, this release includes the following:

Change list for build 1.22:

- It is now possible to select multiple databases for defrag/compact/fixup from the action bar

- This version of Defrag.NSF now support R6, R7 and R8

- The by Ratio view has been renamed to "Health Index"

- Fixed a problem that can occur where the Technical Settings document takes up a large amount of the screen

- You can now request that Compact be run before Defrag

- Additional logging appears on the screen after a Defrag showing the time taken to perform the operation.

- New Uninstall option

You can get a trial copy form here