introducing lotus groupware @ uzh · 30/11/11 migration to lotus groupware @ uzh, roberto mazzoni /...

30/11/11

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Migration to Lotus Groupware @ UZHImplementing IBM Lotus Notes® in a Heterogenous Client Environment

Roberto Mazzoni / Roman Meng

30/11/11 Migration to Lotus Groupware @ UZH, Roberto Mazzoni / Roman Meng

IT Services

Agenda

– Introduction

– Challenges, requirements & why IBM Lotus® ?

– A technical approach

– Overview

– IMAP

– POP

– Lotus Traveler

– Lotus iNotes

– Multilingual

– Conclusion


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UZH - Introduction


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University of Zurich - About

– Established 1833, first radices date back to 1525

– The largest university in Switzerland with over 26,000 students (as an International comparison: Oxford: 20,000 students)

– Alumni of the University of Zurich include 12 Nobel Prize laureates (W. Röntgen, A. Einstein, E. Schrödinger, K. A. Müller, et al.)

– Rated 51 in the “Academic Ranking of World Universities 2010“

– Worldwide rank 38 in “Clinical Medicine and Pharmaceutics”

– Worldwide rank 30 in “Life Sciences and Agriculture”

– Member of the „League of European Research Universities“ (LERU)

– Schrödinger supercomputer ranked 96 in November 2009


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University of Zurich – Mission Statement

– pursues scholarly research and teaching and provides related services

– strives to provide exceptional quality in these areas and measures itself against the highest international standards

– is aware of its responsibility in maintaining and offering a wide range of academic disciplines

– grants as high a level of independence and shared responsibility as possible to its students and staff, and promises equal opportunity on all levels

– nurtures the intellectual, professional, and personal development of its students and staff

– is committed to a participatory management style

– offers its staff modern contracts and working conditions


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University of Zurich - Funding

– Total income/costs: 1,162,000,000 CHF (2009)


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University of Zurich – Structure

– People – including guests approximately 35,000 members

– over 26,000 students

– approx. 500 professors

– approx. 2,700 academic personnel

– approx. 2,000 administrative personnel

– approx. 800 private lecturers / nominal professors

– approx. 2000 assistant lecturers

– numerous guests

– Decentralized and self-governed – 180 self-governed units

– 7 faculties

– approx. 150 institutes

– about 15 competence centers

– numerous associated institutes


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IBM Lotus® @ UZH – History– 2005

– The university's IT strategy retains the evaluation of a groupware containing the usual suspects: e-mail, scheduling, contacts, tasks, mobile synchronization

– Opting for document management, synchronous communication, workflows

– Replacing the old solution for approx. 35,000 users– 2007

– Open tenders– 2008

– End of evaluation, final decision done by the university management – 2009

– Internal “Going live” with IT services– 2010

– Official “Going live” and migration of the 40'000 users (yes, we found some more...)

– 2011 – Closing operations for the project


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Challenges, Requirements & Why IBM Lotus® ?


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Challenges

– Faculties/Institutes have very high degree of autonomy in the name of "freedom for research and teaching".

– The instruments for the academic usage ranges from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), super computing up to devices suitable for outdoor use in extreme conditions. (Sounds strange, but believe us... they want them all to collaborate...)

– Software needed for academic usage is built on a broad range of operating systems, some of them very exotic. (Do you really believe OS/2, AmigaOS or OpenVMS is exotic? Don't even dare...)

– Academic work is international, public, interdisciplinary and strongly networked. (like a good MMO...)


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Challenges

– The academic user has a very mobile working environment. (you remember the terms “outdoor” and “extreme conditions”?)

– Most people work for different Institutes/Faculties/Universities simultaneously and are often sharing a full-time equivalent with other people. (Guess where we found the “other” users, so the headcount went from 35'000 up to 40'000)

– High fluctuation due to academic interchange and the nature of academic studies.

– Most of them are university graduates... (“No, you can't use this mouse for bio-chemical experiments... It's for your computer...”)


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All these challenges lead us to...

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Requirements

– Some more requirements


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Free choice & No standard environment

– People / institutes don't pay for the service, its free of charge, so they are not obliged to use it. We have to SELL the service with persuasion, so it has to be „good“.

– So let's raise the bar, as we have to meet the standards as expected by the users (and provided by the old solution)

– High availability from every workplace

– Transparent service cloud needed

– Scalable & Fast

– Disaster-resistent (failover)

– No enforcement possible neither for an operating system, a client nor for a version of it

– Different deployed version of all (non-lotus) applications

– What we try is to “enforce” at least a common “major” version of Lotus Notes


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Free choice & No standard environment

– Lotus Notes support for at least the main operating systems

– 40 % Microsoft® Windows®, from Windows 2000 to Windows 7

– 40 % Apple® Mac OS, from 9.x to OS X 10.6

– 20 % other, mostly Linux® of various distributions and some exotic ones

– Everything available in every bitness or flavour

– How to „close the gap“ if no Lotus Notes® is available

– Not all systems allow a fat client, in many cases only a light-weight client as an imap-only-client is possible.

– Or the OS is simply not supported

– Open protocols to support a lot of (native) clients where Lotus Notes/iNotes is not possible or feasible (see later)


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Role centric model

– Not only the person is important, but their role is it too and it has to be separable from the person

– Need for non personal, shared collaboration resources accessible through access rights

– Mailfiles, Calendars, Contacts, Room/Resources, Applications, Databases, etc

– Shared Mailbox: That's where mail-in kicks in


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Multilingual

– Switzerland alone has 4 languages of the country

– Full support for different languages needed

– Combined with the role centric model this means that people need to have the possibility to dynamically switch the language

– Not only multilingual templates

– Multilingual Mailfiles too...

– And that dynamically in realtime...


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Openness of data

– No vendor lock acceptable

– Possibility to extract data after work done needed

– Access to data from non proprietary client required

– Open protocols (see later) to exchange/extract/import data

– Guest users


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Part of the data on foreign systems

– It is not possible for the people to have all their data they need for their work on the lotus system. Some data has to be stored on foreign systems

– If we want that they use Lotus Notes/iNotes® as a sole system, it will have to support the protocols to access the data on foreign systems.

– Example

– IMAP Implementation in Lotus Notes...

– That's one of the main reasons we can't recommend Lotus Notes as the „one and only“ client


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Interchange with non-lotus-systems needed

– The lotus systems have to connect with non-lotus-systems

– Open standardized protocols are the key

– IMAP/POP3 - standard for mail

– iCal – standard to read calendar data

– ics - to exchange calendar data in file format

– CalDAV - standard for read/write access to calendar data incl. free/busy

– CardDAV - upcoming standard for contacts data

– SyncML - standard for mobile pim synchronization

– ActiveSync - standard for mobile pim synchronization


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Interchange with non-lotus systems needed

– And by the way...

– „Open Source & Standards are key to making our planet smarter and improving the way we live and work. [...] IBM is an industry leader helping governments move toward greater openness and innovation. Our commitment and perspective on intellectual property, open standards, and open source software emerges from our experience in the marketplace and, equally important, from the direction in which we see information technology taking the larger society.“

–

(http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/ossstds/ - Open Source and Standards @ IBM)

http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/ossstds/


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Why Lotus®? The Clients

– Clients

– Highly heterogeneous environment at the UZH (→ diversity / autonomy)

– Lotus Notes supports a broad client infrastructure at the different release levels

– The most important operating systems are supported for the full client

– OS X, Windows, Linux

– Strategical importance of the web frontend: Lotus iNotes covers basic to advanced functionality for desktop up to mobile computers

– Works with a wide range of browser, supported for the most important of them

– Open technology


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Why Lotus®? The Servers

– Server infrastructure leaves a very solid and sophisticated impression. (→ high quality)

– Scalable!

– Most of the time very stable

– Also great flexibility in the host operating system for the servers

– Extensive documentation

– Extension possible with other Lotus products


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Why Lotus®?

– Scope of function / flexibility– Very broad (!) scope of function, very well covered to a great extent

– Coverage of demands with regard to „Accessibility“ and „Usability“(→ equal opportunity)

– Potential for closing existing gaps (IMAP implementation, etc.)

– Open platform with possibilities for expansion and further development (→ self-management / autonomy)

– Costs– Within a 3-5 year perspective with a favorable and transparent cost structure

– License model– The university treats all members (~40,000) equally and offers them all the

opportunity to use the system (→ equal opportunity)

– Flexible offer, well suited to the purposes of the UZH

– Supplier as implementation partner


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A technical approach


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Solution OverviewThe current (simplified) server situation

Administration1

Mail1

Application1

Test1

Development1

Traveler®

1

IMAP Proxy1

Sametime®

1

Mail2

Mail3

Mail4

Mail5

Mail6

Mail7

Mail8

Mail9

Mail10

Mail11

Mail12

IMAP Proxy2

Traveler2

Sametime2

Application2

Test2

Development2

Test Environment 1

Test Environment 2

Test Environment 3

Intranet

Mail Gateways +Anti Virus / SPAM

Internet

SMTP

SMTP

SMTP

IBM Tivoli® Identity Manager®


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Drawbacks and Opportunities: IMAP Task

– Read / Unread, does it matter? (PMR 68612,211,848)

– Unread Mark Inconsistency on Server with IMAP

– Status:

– Closed

– SPR

– Deleting mails in IMAP leads to incorrect unread marks for new mails (read instead of unread) (PMR 68751,211,8489)

– Status:

– Closed

– Fixed in 8.5.1 via private hotfix

– Included in 8.5.2 Mainstream (SPR #TPON7MFEPW)


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– How to transform that task into a transparent service (cloud)?

– External solution with a open-source imap proxy called Perdition (and the nomen wasn't an omen)

IP Dispatcher

idlperd01207.48

idlperd02207.49

Round Robin

IP Dispatcher

idlmail01.lotus207.12

imap.lotuspop.lotus

207.6






idlmail01207.42

idlmail02207.43

idlmail01207.42

idlmail04207.45

idlmail05207.46

idlmail06207.47

idlmail03207.44

LDAP-Map

Perdition IMAP/POP Proxy

Lotus Domino®

POP/IMAP

Port 110,143,993,995


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– Challenge: Can you cluster IMAP with Lotus Domino?– Short answer: No

– Long answer: Yes, now, after a long ride, you can...

– PMR 67789,211,848– No clustering for IMAP and no possibility to solve it with external solutions.

– Development of a solution by IBM

– Status: Closed

– Private Hotfix in 8.5.1

– Included in 8.5.2 Mainstream (SPR #YDEN7F8HBQ)

– So what's the problem?– For IMAP unique ids (UID) are crucial for every client

– Without the client looses track

– Best Solution: Guarantee on every server the same IMAP UID for the same message (which wasn't and isn't the case)

– Problem: UIDs aren't replicated, instead they are generated by every server


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– The solution IBM provided: If we can't make them the same, at least make sure that they differ

– Implementation of IMAP_UIDVALIDITY. If set to a different value on every server, it guarantees that the UIDs are different.

– So, when a IMAP client fails over, no UID he knows does exist, so he will download all messages again (drawback), but you get a stable state (opportunity)

– We had some problems with customers complaining that they see deleted mail again after a fail-over, but couldn't reproduce these issue. We think these problems are based on other issues.


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– IMAP Data Corruption– Increasing number of error reports: Note NTxxxx was not updated in the IMAP

btree. Corruption of database.

– Seems to happen when moving documents from one folder to another in IMAP.

– There's even an article about it in the DominoPower Magazine, a quote from it: "IBM suggested that we temporarily disabled IMAP on all mail files, but that was out of question..." (http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue201004/00002501001.html)

– Status:

– Open / we never could really track it down

– May be fixed in 8.5.2 (Time will tell...)

– Delegation of Mailfiles– There is a fine IMAP delegation functionality included in Lotus Domino.

– It enables you to access other maifiles via IMAP if you got the rights

– It maps it in the folder tree in a new folder called “Other users”

http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue201004/00002501001.html)Status




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– Delegation of Mailfiles

– Sadly, it does not work if the mailfile of the access right holder is not present on the same server as the accessed mailfile.

– So with about 12 Mailservers and 80'000 Mailfiles we were in trouble, especially as we have a lot of delegations (remember the “role based”?)

– The restriction wasn't documented anywhere. And (from a customer view) it doesn't makes sense anyway: Why should you need your own mailfile only to access another mailfile?

– We're still in discussion with IBM about this.

– Status:

– Open

– CritSit

– Solution tested for 8.5.3


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Minor Pitfalls: POP Task

– Ever seen a server sized for 10'000 users (2000 concurrent) going down on its knees with the load of 20 POP Users?

– Don't use exact sizes! (we never did)

– And even estimated sizes are not enough (we did)

– New Notes.ini-Param in 8.5.1FP2:

– POP3_List_Size_Estimation=1

– Gives back 40k for every message as size.

– The 40k is a fake, but better than intensive number crunching including a take down of the server


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Lotus Traveler

– We would have preferred SyncML (Open Standard)

– Did you know that 99% of the synchronization inside Lotus Traveler is SyncML? (except ActiveSync)

– But we're happy with the current solution as it works for all needed mobile OS

– Works like a charm


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Lotus Traveler

Population January 2011

Double i-Devices and set Androids > 200 for November 2011


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Lotus Traveler

– Now a problem: How to cluster Lotus Traveler and to keep it transparent (as a service)?

– You can't do this out-of-the-box, but maybe this could be a working solution for you too:

– Flip-Flop with a standby-server.

– Caveats: Users will do a prime sync when they flip-flop. But better than nothing.

IP Dispatcher

idltrav01207.58

idltrav02207.59

„Flip Flop“

Lotus Traveler

All Ports sync.lotus207.10


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Lotus iNotes / DominoWebAccess (Webmail)– Same procedure as everywhere else: How to cluster Lotus iNotes and to

keep it transparent (as a service)?

– We've chosen a simple solution:

IP Dispatcher

idlmail01207.42

idlmail02207.43

idlmail01207.42

idlmail04207.45

idlmail05207.46

idlmail06207.47

Round Robin

IP Dispatcher


idlmail03207.44webmail.lotus

207.5






idlmail01207.42

idlmail02207.43

idlmail01207.42

idlmail04207.45

idlmail05207.46

idlmail06207.47

idlmail03207.44

Round RobinRedirect

iwaredir.nsf Lotus iNotes

Port 80,443


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Multilingual and dynamic

– Think about the following situation:– A professor and three assistants share a mailfile

– Two of them speak German and English, one only English and the last one only German

– Which language template would you apply?

– That's one of the reasons for us to have multilingual mailfiles, so the users can choose their language dynamically

– PMR #11101,112,848, #11995,112,848 et al.

– Hot fix developed by IBM

– ENABLE_MULTILINGUAL_FOLDERS=1 & Merger tool for the template

– Worked great for the last 7-8 months

– We found now a problem with Lotus Traveler which didn't synchronize the inbox anymore by some users.

– Included in 8.5.2: SPR #SHEZ6VLEDR, #RGAU7ZXN4T


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CalDAV

– De facto standard for synchronizing calendar data

– Based on iCal – format

– Able to do read/write – access, tasks, busy/free-schedules, etc

– Implementation on many devices (iPhone...) and clients (Mozilla Thunderbird, etc).

– IBM was talking about it since years behind the curtains

– But we haven't seen a solution yet– Even a subscribable read-only iCal-Feed of the calendars would be great

– (and better than nothing)

– At the moment: No out-of-the-box solution to give third-party-co-workers a feed about your calendar data.


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Conclusion


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Conclusion

– Don't forget: it's a groupware, not only a mail system

– We're still happy

– We are ready to roll out Lotus Sametime Standard

– What we think about IBM as our provider and implementation partner:

– Flexible, reactive and open minded to our needs

– Robust

– Did you ever loose a redundant SAN?

– But we still agree with Marie Scott (Director of E-mail Services, Virginia Commonwealth University): “Why do universities like “free, free, free”?” ☺

introducing lotus groupware @ uzh · 30/11/11 migration to lotus groupware @ uzh, roberto mazzoni /...

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