planning ahead to connect the dots between ibm domino, notes, connections and the cloud

© 2013 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.

Planning Ahead to Connect the Dots Between IBM Domino, Notes, Connections and the CloudFrancie Tannerpanagenda

What We’ll Cover …

• Introduction• Infrastructure/IBM Connections• Regulation/Security• Cloud/Preparing your Migration• Wrap-up

2

Introduction

• Francie Tanner, Technical Director, Americas Over 15 years experience in IBM Notes and

Domino consulting Managing, architecting, and supporting

10-100,000 user environments Experienced instructor and speaker Is from Switzerland, lives in the Caribbean

3

Introduction (cont.)

• Regardless if you’re thinking about going to the cloud, Connections, consolidating, or growing your environment: Crucial data lives in various places in your IT infrastructure Doing any of the above projects requires you to look at this

data in a “big picture” view

• The challenge: How do you connect the various information silos? Knowledge is spread out in the environment in numerous

repositories on several servers In many situations, companies aren’t even aware of the

information available to them

4

Introduction (cont.)

• Scope and theme of this session There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution to this

problem But we can show you where and how to look to make sense of

your connected environment You don’t necessarily need a third-party product or vendor to

help you If you haven’t noticed by now, this isn’t a technical integration

session Three customer scenarios are covered where we’ve helped

cope with these types of issues

5



6

Infrastructure/IBM Connections

• Leveraging the full potential of IBM Connections can have a significant impact on your IT environment Connecting end-user knowledge to projects and communities Providing wikis or Knowledge Bases File repositories to store data outside of email Discussion boards, forums, blogs

• Your reason to deploy Connections depends on your IT strategy What you want to measure/know more about, hence, depends

on that, too

7

Infrastructure/IBM Connections (cont.)

• Important not only in this example: Know your baseline! What amount of _____ (fill in the blank focus area) are you

doing today?

• Server metrics and statistics help you gain transparency

8


• How do you plan a Connections implementation and introduce it to employees? Who gets access?

Who is my pilot group? Which mail servers/regions/organization levels?

How do you communicate your goal to employees? Do organizational policies have to be created by management?

Files larger than __ have to live in Connections All communication around a certain project lives in

Connections

9


• Customer example: “What effects will Connections have on my Domino mailing infrastructure?” Primary goal: Reducing the Domino mail volume Primary goal: Reducing the number of large attachments in

Domino databases Secondary goal: Gain better server performance with less

traffic, which in turn leads to server consolidation potential

10


• Customer example: Messaging baseline and impact Domino Statistics (gathered via STATREP.NSF)

Mail.TotalRouted (Mail.Delivered/Mail.Transferred) Mail.DeliveredSize.* (Mail.TransferredSize.*)

File Export Comma Separated Value Combine results of multiple servers in spreadsheet calculation

software• See Andy Pedisich’s blog at www.andypedisich.com on how to

process cumulative statistics in spreadsheet calculation programs

11


• Customer example: IBM Connections metrics Connections Files Servermetrics (gathered via Web browser)

URL: https://your.connections.server/files/app#/statistics File sharing details/user activity

12


• Summary: What information do we understand better now? Our Domino mail volume in general and attachment size

distribution Information on how many users use the Files application Data on the files being attached Over time, effectiveness of the Connections implementation

• Connecting the above dots tells you if and how the goals are being achieved Continuous analysis is needed here

13


• Bonus tip: other Connections server metrics exist Only basic information is provided, IBM Cognos is not required Activity Stats:

https://your.connections.server/activities/service/html/servermetrics

Community Stats: https://your.connections.server/communities/service/html/servermetrics

14



15

Regulation/Security

• Fact: The way we collaborate is constantly evolving New collaboration solutions come and go

Chat and VOIP solutions are adopted and decommissioned Remember the 360 degree turn of ICQ?

Mobile device access is relatively new and “addictive” This means constantly evolving security, standardization,

and integration challenges Company mergers and migrations sometimes force change Labor laws and regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC, and

HIPAA, apply Think electronic information retention

16

Regulation/Security (cont.)

• Let’s look at one of these unusual and interesting examples now ...

• Customer Example: Volkswagen decided to turn off BlackBerry email forwarding outside working hours

• Customer Example: Atos announced an intended ban of internal emails in 2014

• Social responsibility pressure is building, particularly among large European companies because of the above

17


• Former “nice to have“ technical information suddenly has management attention Such as mail volume forwarded to BlackBerry devices during

non-business hours Such as total amount of email processed per month Such as alternative collaboration methods to be implemented

and measured

18


• Basic questions: How many emails are sent through our messaging

environment? How many of those are sent to or from mobile devices?

• Knowledge Repositories Domino Statistics (gathered via STATREP

.NSF as before) Mail.Delivered Mail.Transferred

19


• Knowledge Repositories Traveler Statistics (gathered via STATREP.NSF as before)

Traveler.DeviceSync.Documents.ToDevice.Mail.Add Traveler.DeviceSync.Documents.ToServer.Mail.Add

BES Statistics (gathered via SNMP browser) blackBerryServer.besTotMsgsSent.0 ( SNMP OID:

1.3.6.1.4.1.3530.5.3.0 ) blackBerryServer.besTotMsgsRecvd.0 ( SNMP OID:

1.3.6.1.4.1.3530.5.4.0 )

20


• Advanced questions: Group information per weekday, rather than on a simple time

axis Group information per work shift within a weekday

21


• Information Ninja-level questions: Break down the information to identify region, location, and

department volume Connecting messaging information with HR data helps

22


• Customer gained transparency on: What the actual collaboration usage patterns are What measures are reasonable to enforce in their situation

• Customer approach as a result: Organizational policy that discourages outside work hour mobile

device email activity Continuously checking mail volume to verify policy compliance

• Options down the line: Analysis broken down to locations and departments enables pin-

point measures If continuous compliance measurements aren’t satisfactory,

service restrictions may need to be implemented

23



24

Cloud/Preparing Your Migration

• Core question in every migration – what do you have to migrate? We’re assuming you’ve answered the “why” at this point

• Migration destinations: XPages, Notes Web Plugin, LotusLive, Traveler, something else, etc.

• Knowing your environment is a basic requirement Database activity and resource usage User behavior and activity patterns

• The data you need is already in your LOG.NSF (and CATALOG.NSF), we simply need to turn it into useful information

25

Cloud/Preparing Your Migration (cont.)

• DB Activity: LOG.NSF – documents with form type “Activity”

Answers baseline questions around what is used, not used, size

View selection formula: SELECT FORM = "Activity" Add columns that are interesting in your scenario

26


• DB Activity: LOG.NSF – database activity details

Note there is a 1,400 activity entry maximum per database (FIFO)

There is also a 64K size limit for the user activity More details in IBM Technote #1086245

27


• DB Activity: CATALOG.NSF Related information, but different focus Full text index details Replication information ACL overview Note: maintenance tasks ...

28


• When is user activity a topic? Can be important when consolidation is a part of the migration DB activity summaries are limited by technical restrictions, raw

user data not so much When differentiating between server and user activity

• Why are usage patterns important? Learning how users use Notes or other software

Such as before migrating to XPages, Notes browser plugin Identifying “abnormal” access

Terminated users still accessing systems, huge amounts of data transfer, etc.

29


• How can we extract that kind of data? Simple user activity via view in your log.nsf, export to CSV Session activity/usage patterns via script or third-party tools

30


• User Activity: LOG.NSF – basic information is easy to extract

File Export Comma Separated Value Combine results of multiple servers in spreadsheet calculation

software

31


• Summary: What kind of questions can we now answer? Which databases are used/unused? What kind of traffic do we see on different servers? What is the proportion between storage requirement and

activity? Which users generate which amount of server traffic? Where are the users geographically in relation to the

information?

32


• All this can tell you ... and more How much space is needed in the new cloud solution Which databases or servers can be decommissioned Which databases should move closer to users How much traffic is expected in the new cloud solution

33



34

7 Key Points to Take Home

1. Useful information lives everywhere, existing and custom views in IBM Domino, Connections, Traveler, and other logs, catalogs

2. Exporting data and making it user friendly goes a long way You may already have the answers to questions, but don’t know

where to look

3. Combining different data sources in spreadsheet format paints a connected “big picture”

4. Be sure to check out those Connections and Traveler URLs

35

7 Key Points to Take Home (cont.)

5. You can’t truly migrate, expand, consolidate without knowing your baseline

6. Even though we don’t go into day-to-day monitoring and statistics in here, it’s crucial; learn more about this

7. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone, as each project is different

36

Your Turn!

37

How to contact me:Francie Tanner

[email protected]

planning ahead to connect the dots between ibm domino, notes, connections and the cloud

Technology

connections implementation

potential of ibm connections

connections server metrics

customer example

transferred mail

totalrouted mail

dotsbetween ibm domino

impact domino statistics