Domino 6 Poll

[jward]

I'm trying to identify what is the most widely used practice when setting up a Domino 6 infrustructure. Simply responding to this with user/server counts and basic layout information will help.

1: Total Number of Domino Servers ______
2: Total Number of Domino Users ______
3: Total Number of Domino Application Server ______
4: Total Number of Domino Mail Servers ______

To Question 5 place a X on the option that applies


5: Hub & Spoke _____ Clustered _____ Both _____


Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[pmonett]

I fail to see how this will be of any use to you, but here goes :

1 : 6
2 : 700
3 : 2
4 : 2
5 : Clustered

Pascal.

 

[jward]

Thank You Pascal for your input, I'll explain what I'm trying to do with the information. Here's my answer to the above questions.

1: 9
2: 350
3: 3 ( 2 mail & 1 SMTP Gateway)
4: 6 ( 4 DB/Apps , 1 Hub & 1 Developement server)
5: Hub & Spoke

As you can see my Domino network contain 3 more servers than yours yet I have half the users. All our servers are reaching their EOL and need to be replaced. I don't feel the need to replace all 9 servers and think that I might have options to cut back. If I were to restructure my Domino network on your design I would already see a savings of around $15,000. That number only reflects replace purchases, not administration, maintenence and other costs associated with each server on the network.

 

[pmonett]

I was afraid of that. You are modelling your needs on my numbers without any idea of the infrastructure or the requirements on my side.
We have two mail servers that are clustered for redundancy. We have two application servers, but one is dedicated to a particularly heavy application. The other two are a dev server in its own domain, and a test server that replicates the production server, but is cut from the production network.

I admit that, at first glance, 9 servers for less than 500 people seems to be overkill. If you think that you can trim that number, good for you. But I would be wary of comparing your numbers to mine (or any others) without knowing what infrastructure decisions have been taken.

For 350 people, I would estimate that one mail server and one application server would be enough. If development is done in-house, I always advocate a dedicated dev server in order to avoid breaking production because of programming issues. A test/training server is a good idea if there is lots of new development - this can even be temporary. Additionally, if access from the web is required, it is a good idea to have a server in a DMZ, replicating info from the mail server/cluster and serving it to the Internet. Those are my ideas, but I am not an admin.
As far as I can see, there is not really all that much you can skimp on. You have a mail server cluster plus the SMTP server - maybe you could take out the SMTP server but that depends a lot on your infrastructure. The development server is obviously a requirement, and given that you have a hub server for your application servers, I suspect that the 4 app servers are in 4 separate locations.
So the question is : can you afford replacing 4 app servers and a hub with a single (more powerful) app server and dedicated phone lines for each of the remote locations ? The costs need to be weighed carefully in this case before you can take a decision.
In my company, there are no remote locations, so we do not have that issue.

Such differences are the things that keep you from comparing your infrastructure to ours on a number basis only - unless I misinterpreted your architecture entirely.

Pascal.

 

[jward]

A more detailed look at ouor Notes Network,

All four app servers are in the same building, In fact some in the same rack, Original design was to overcome database limitations in Notes 4.x. The logic was to split the databases up by sales regions. 2 of the application/database servers are split between our sales force of 165 people. A 3rd application/database server is for our Sales Management team of 10 people. The 4th server does nothing but replicate with the hub server. The hub server contains the master databases and replicas of all of our mail databases. The 2 mail servers are split, 1 for internal users and the other for our sales force. Then we have our SMTP Server. Based on our current design I have in some cases the same data in 3 location yet it is only available to my users from 1 server. The server the user actually created the replica from. Our quoting system was developed in house and ran on multiple servers running less than 1g processors in 2000. There has been no major changes to the application so how do I justfy replacing 9 servers with larger more redundant systems when the design is not based on a failover. In my current design a hardware failure still translates to downtime, Your design doesn't. My data might be safe but my service level agreement will fail with every system failure. Our Migration to a Windows 2003 Domain will cut the Domain server count by 50% due to bigger and better hardware, Based on that I'm trying to achieve the same results in our Domino Domain.

 

[pmonett]

Okay, so 4 app servers because of R4x limitations - all in one physical location.
In this case, I would indeed cut it down to only two clustered app servers under R6. Much more robust, and you shouldn't have any more db size issues because of the change in On-Disk Structure in R5 and after.
Note that in the upcoming R7, your Notes databases can be put directly into DB2 format - could be a plus for you.

Pascal.

 

[camma]

I concur with pmonett, especially about upgrading to the latest release. Taking advantage of the new features offered will not only help with usability and serviceability, but it will decrease overall cost of ownership. Also, according to Lotus, end of life for R5 is this August. And as you probably know, end of life for R4 was some time ago.