Ed Brill

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1. 1  Ian Scott  | 10/26/2009 2:13:56 PM

   I found the link from Gregg Eldred

   { Link }

   Glad to see a few of us pitched in. I found it quite interesting that the authors response to Charles makes clear he isn't trivialising what is involved.

1. 2  David Jones http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/jonesy/ | 10/26/2009 3:01:25 PM

   Yes, upgrading the two i5 servers we have to 8.5.1 was painless and extremely quick. Unfortunately, upgrading a Notes client to 8.5.1 can take up to an hour... and that's with leaving Symphony, Activities and Composite Applications out of the installation. =(

1. 3  Mike Brown http://www.browniesblog.com | 10/26/2009 4:12:22 PM

   @2

   You don't say which version of the client you were upgrading *from*! If it's 8.5 then an hour is a long time.

   Are you using an incremental installer?

   Cheers,

   - Mike

1. 4  Michael Kinder http://www.acadiasolutions.com | 10/26/2009 5:00:06 PM

   Thanks for this link everyone, my favorite of the whole article though was the end. Its suppose to save money right, but he recommends buying third party products to help the move and a team of consultants to make it easier. Right. This is not moving from a competing product mind you - its from Exchange to Exchange. Amazing.

1. 5  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 10/26/2009 5:53:07 PM

   Why it's 8 reasons NOT to upgrade to 2010...

   (I didn't even include licensing as the article didn't mention it...)

   1. If I'm working with Lotus Domino and want to move to Exchange 2001, what do I need to do.

   This is right, except that unlike Exchange, Lotus Notes is an Application server and there more to Lotus than mail. Migrating apps is very expensive. Also, most migrations to and from Lotus I participated were done for political reasons, not because one is better than the other.

   2. Can I simply upgrade an Exchange 2007 Organization to 2010 by upgrading my server in-place?

   Yep. You cannot upgrade on the MS side. It's a rip-n-replace.

   You can with Lotus still. It's about 10-15 minutes for the in-place upgrade. If you have a REALLY big directory (>20,000) users, you might be waiting on the reboot for view reindexing for about 20-30 mins. (That's assuming you don't want to pre-update the indexes off-line and insert when rebooting the Domino service.)

   3. If I drop my Exchange 2007 servers, will I loose WebDAV support for Mac Entourage clients?

   This is correct. Short answer is yes, they'll see an outage if you upgrade them first or upgrade the servers. Better watch the timing.

   Not so with Lotus. You can upgrade the servers or the clients first. (Just don't replace the design of the mail file to newer than the client version.)

   If the users have local replicas or the Lotus servers are clustered, your users might not even notice the 10-15 minute upgrade time.

   4. Can I have Exchange 2008 coexist with Exchange 2000 or 2003, then complete the transition to Exchange 2010 later?

   Correct. You cannot. You have to upgrade to Native mode. During the upgrade process, it will complain if anyone logs into the server via Terminal services and a couple other protocols. So while you upgrade yourself to native, take another rip-n-replace outage. It's okay, the MS admins, don't know better. It's normal and expected. They have been well trained.

   If they were running Lotus, yes. You can still have a R6 or R7 or R8 or R8.5 or the current R8.51 servers and clients all running. (I have a couple customers with still R5 clients that haven't gotten around to upgrading them -- yes, it works just fine. But hey, time to upgrade the last few R5 clients...

   5. What should I have in place within my Exchange 2003/2007 environment before I implement Exchange 2010?

   This is correct and pretty standard.

   For Lotus, be on a supported version of whatever OS you are running. That way if there is an issue that gets traced back to the OS, there is somebody to call. There's no forest to upgrade, just insert in the CD or mount the disk image and have at it. The get off the computer and spend time with the family.

   6. In what order should I deploy Exchange 2010 roles?

   Oh straightforward and complicated.

   In Lotus, stop the Domino services. Upgrade the server and 15 minutes later get back to work. If you want to make a server run an additional service, type "load servicename". Open any ports, add any dns entry, and then add the service to the notes.ini so it runs automatically the next Domino service restart. Time about 2-5 minutes.

   7. What is an online mailbox move?

   Yeah, Exchange can finally move a mail box while servicing users. Lotus has supported that for ages. Pre R4, you created a new replica and then edited the user's person doc to point mail to the users new mail file replica. Then you updated their location settings in the client. Afterwards it is all done automatically via AdminP. Oh look and you have to do it in the new fancy Exchange 2007 command line interface that's just soooo intuitive.

   In Lotus, this is all GUI and has been around for ages...

   8. How should we handle use of certificates in our Exchange environment?

   Yep, that's correct. When they suggest the one certificate with multiple names versus 3 separate ones, let's just say it's a bit more complicated with 3 separate certs.

   Yes, that's right, with Lotus you need 0. It has included a certificate authority/cert.id from the beginning. It also has supported SSL and X509 certificates in the same CA for several versions now. If you want the SSL, you still only need one, unless you want more just because.

   9. Bonus: Getting a smooth move.

   Yes, hours following technotes to do a dry run setting up a model of production in test. Upgrading the Forest, upgrading the DCs, upgrading the mail servers (transport hubs), and then upgrading all the other "ancillary" IIS stuff. Running through multiple times making notes in the margins of various on-line documentation links, and then do do in production only to blow up and have to restore my backups. (Oh yes, there's no undo.) Only to then find a new documentation in the checklist that wasn't there a few weeks earlier. So you get to repeat the who process and pray before upgrading production again. Oh yes, that was SOOOO MUCH FUN!

   I'm sorry, I've upgraded my last 2003 server to 2007 and I'm not upgrading anymore to 2010 if I can help it.

   I'll just stick with Lotus Notes and do the 15 mins upgrade. (After all, it's quicker to upgrade my Lotus Domino server than to write these comments...).

   Even if you migrate from Windows 2003 or Windows 2003 to Linux for a Domino upgrade. It's as simple as coping the d:\lotus\domino\data folder to the new linux box (e.g. local/notesdata/) as the new notes user, updating the ini for path differences, and installing same version of Lotus domino on the new linux box. The time for the migration depends mostly on the time it takes to copy your files from the Windows server to the Linux one. The software install on the new box is still only 10-15 minutes.

1. 6  Henning Heinz  | 10/27/2009 2:43:39 AM

   All true but you get used to it. What you describe is done once every six years or so. And while Microsoft is always preaching their newest version, customers are often at least one version behind. And when you decide to update you are replacing everything because it was about time anyway.

   I am not going to defend Microsoft. IBM does a better job here. Microsoft customers often just do not care. It has always been like that.

   When you talk about install times. I would love IBM to include a SMTP wizard for the server setup. While this is not a big deal for me, most problems with new setups being done by novice users are with the SMTP settings.

   A wizard probably does the job with not more than 10 questions and could vastly improve the first Domino experience (I expect Foundations to do this better).

1. 7  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 10/27/2009 8:39:12 AM

   Ed - Moving from Exchange 2007 to 2010 does not require a new OS, so in the context of the specific scenario the author was outlining it wasn't an issue. However, as Henning says, many customers run a revision behind due to the extraordinary effort required to do a migration, so it is a very real concern.

1. 8  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 10/27/2009 9:15:50 AM

   @3 upgrading to 8.5.1 clients has been really slow and painful, seeing on average 45-60 minutes and that is going from 8.5 usually.

   I posted a video of upgrading Domino because it took about 3 minutes, in real time. Can't do it for the clients.

1. 9  skip  | 10/27/2009 10:52:30 AM

   #6 - SMTP wizard would be a great help.

1. 10  Irv Schor  | 10/27/2009 12:01:46 PM

   Domino upgrades are so easy, a Caveman could do it (heck I can!). The area that does need to be addressed is related to Sametime Awareness breaking post upgrade. The STLinks, stlinks.js, and hostinfo.js files are overwritten during upgrades and some hotfixes, and it always breaks ST Awareness for browser users. Sure, you can back it up and copy it back, but why not just have a checkbox or a pop up asking "Do you want to upgrade STLinks?". This would make life much easier for shops where Sametime for IM is run from a separate sever, particularly when different versions are involved and or a seaparate dedicated IM server is being used. The continual overwriting of STLinks is something that should be looked at, as it could be improved. It would be nice to just be prompted during the upgrade 'Do you want to upgrade STLinks?'. Please note that while some technotes state the files are backed up, I have yet to find them to restore.

1. 11  Ian Scott  | 10/27/2009 1:21:34 PM

   @8 - It is painful upgrading an existing R8 user.

   On my work machine I initially installed 8.5.1 over the top of 8.5.0 but after a few days decided to do a clean install. To do that I first uninstalled Notes 8.5 and then renamed the Notes directory where some detritus was left in. I didn't measure it but it took ages. I then installed 8.5.1 and while slow it was faster than the uninstall.

   Today I upgraded a Notes 7.0.2 user to 8.5.1. First I uninstalled Notes 7 which took a few minutes. Then I did a clean install of Notes 8.5.1 and it took about 10 - 15 minutes which is still too slow.

   On that evidence it seems to me that it is the uninstall of 8.x that is the main cause of the issue.

1. 12  Ian Scott  | 10/27/2009 1:28:22 PM

   I should add that only our pilot group have to upgrade to R8.5.1 from some other R8 version and that everyone else will be upgrading from 7.0.2. While we'd rather we could do it in 5 minutes we can live with 15 minutes - it is not going to cause us any problems or issues.

1. 13  Petetm  | 10/27/2009 1:34:24 PM

   @6

   "All true but you get used to it...... I am not going to defend Microsoft. IBM does a better job here. Microsoft customers often just do not care."

   Very sad commentary and statements. I'm wondering if they would care if they knew any better? Meaning, if their eyes were opened up to a world where upgrades and installs are not an arduous task, do you still think they wouldn't care? Put is this way, if you have duel systems in a company and on Friday, both require upgrades, who do you think is going to be in a pissy mode come Monday, the Domino or Exchange admin?

1. 14  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 10/27/2009 3:14:55 PM

   In all fairness Domino 8 upgrades haven't been as painless as R5/6/7 were. I deployed those directly into production with no testing. I didn't do that with R8 because there are a lot of new features that need to be tested thoroughly, and because of the number of problem reports popping up.

1. 15  Erik Brooks  | 10/28/2009 7:04:18 AM

   @14 - "In all fairness Domino 8 upgrades haven't been as painless as R5/6/7 were. I deployed those directly into production with no testing."

   Are you serious?

   Maybe you can do that with the client, but with the server I can name plenty of versions in 5/6/7 that had serious regression issues. At least two R5 releases (crashing and field data loss), five R6 releases (crashing, nupdate hangs, FT index corruption) and two R7 releases (crashing, incorrect layout regressions).

   8.0.x and 8.5 haven't been any different - there's plenty of problems there to bite you. If you don't test you're simply rolling the dice that the regressions that are there don't affect you.

   Fortunately 8.5.1 seems to be vastly improved across the board in all areas. But I'd still test.

1. 16  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 10/28/2009 10:06:13 AM

   @15 - Actually I am serious. I didn't encounter any serious regressions in 5, 6 or 7. I'm not running the world's most complicated Domino application, though.

   I vaguely recall there was some policy stuff that broke in the 6.0.1 or 6.0.2 range, but there wasn't anything nearly as serious as 8.0.2's compact with the -c -i flags and your database is toast issue. I know I was lucky, but I had enough confidence in the build quality of Domino to that point that I wasn't concerned. It wasn't until the severity of problems ramped up that I started following best practices and deploying to a test environment first.

   R8 has also added more new features than any other release I ever used, which also required a lot more testing and tinkering before going live.

1. 17  Nelson Morris  | 10/28/2009 6:13:13 PM

   I think it is called properly Rip - Weep - Replace

1. 18  David Jones http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/jonesy/ | 10/29/2009 8:26:47 AM

   @3 - Most of the clients are on some 8.x version but some are on a R7 release. I didn't know there was an incremental install for 8.5.1 Standard clients.

   @14 - I've had less issues upgrading my domino servers with R8 then with R7, due to some LEI issue we had somewhere in the R7 releases.

1. 19  David H  | 10/29/2009 7:32:51 PM

   Lotus Knows upgrades should be easy and inexpensive.

   Microsoft knows you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time and make a profit either way.

   Lotus Knows you can't fool all of the people all of the time and it's just a matter of time...