Slide 1

UK Lotus User Group 2011

Presented By: Steve McDonagh & Frank Docherty

Admin-Dev SynergyFact or Fiction?

Many of the problems faced by Notes & Domino administrators are often caused by the underlying infrastructure that your Domino Servers live within.

If you spend most of your time patching up your server & network infrastructure, instead of giving your Domino Servers the TLC they deserve, then join Frank Docherty as he shows you how to make your Domino Servers work the way they should.

Frank will cover topics such as email filtering software, firewall configurations, backups, Notes & Domino administration best practices, and generally how to make your life as a Notes & Domino administrator a whole lot easier!

Introduction

Some useless facts about Frank

Worked with Notes & Domino for 16 years (Since Release 3, in case you wondered)

Has been a help desk guy, desktop support engineer, server support engineer, systems administrator, support team leader, IT consultant, software asset manager and project manager

I am currently a Senior Notes & Domino / BES / Sametime administrator within a company that operates at a global level, supporting operations within the UK, Europe, Asia & Americas regions

I live very close to the Tunnocks factory in Uddingston. Too close perhaps ...

Some useless facts about Steve

Has been a Mathematician , Registered Nurse, Licensed Herpetologist, Rock-star, Cartoonist and manufacturer of the Rob Novak levelling Pink Stuff

Worked with Notes & Domino for 126 years and 3 months (or 18 years if you are not a dog)

I am currently the Global Collaboration Manager for a Sino / American Corporation with a deployment of Domino / Quickr / Sametime / Traveler and BES servers

I live very very close to Bushmills Distillery in Northern Ireland

Objective

Within any Development / Administration environment far too often the two strands are separate and never the twain shall meet. (And if they do there will be tears before bed.)

Much of what we will look at today many of you will consider utopian, wishy washy stuff that does not work in the real world, but here is a telling graph

However, we put this before you as a template not of what should be, but what could be if you were to let it happen.

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Agenda

Requirements

Project Management

Architecture & Design

Cutting Code

Review

Testing

Configuration Management

Quality & Defect Management

Deployment

Operations & Support

Measuring Success

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Requirements

All application development projects start with the gathering of requirements.

To some DEVs the ADMIN side of this is more often than not an afterthought.

We suggest that both sides need to be involved at this early stage, but mostly it will be a development collection process which should be encouraged to collect not only from the User groups but from the Admin team

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Project Management

Regular meetings of a project team made up of Devs and Admins will lead to an application that starts of with an element of balance between the Admin and Dev sections of the team.

The early assignment of roles and responsibilities within the project will lead to a more cohesive project team.

( You may need a box for some admins to stand on ...)

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Architecture

Once the requirements are close to being agreed, the admin members of the team start to come into play.

Choosing the appropriate architecture for your application is key, have an admin that understands the detail of the platform(s) and the nature of the project.

That combined with a dev that understands the complexities of the data, code and the nature of the platform will definitely make the project run smoothly and lead to better software!

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Design

Even with a good architecture it is still possible to have a bad design.

Many applications are either over-designed or under-designed.

The two basic principles here are the old PHP axiom of KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid and that of Information Hiding.

UML is very useful for this particularly on large or projects that bring in different platforms, data sources and coding paradigms.

Skill up your Devs AND Admins so they know the principals of UML and can understand what the other person on the team is proposing and respond accordingly to the challenges uncovered in a way that can be understood by everyone.

A good collaborative tool is useful here ;-)

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Cutting Code

This is what Devs do well and do best.

However sometimes their levels of enthusiasm can get the better of everyone!

Talking about the back end processes with an Admin team member before that kill-the-server-run-every-5-minutes-agent is created can push the code in a different more efficient direction.

(And save you from the wrath of Angry Admins)

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Review

Regular reviews of the project by the whole team are essential to the success of the project.

Regular reviews let the Devs know that the architecture is following the code and vice a versa for Admins.

Regular reviews keep everyone informed (and happy, for the most part)

For an even more harmonious project review meeting experienceTM, why not have regular project reviews over a cuppa and biccie?

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Testing

Get your Admin team involved with planning and execution of actual testing!!!!

It is their servers you will be running this on, they are used to the intricacies of performance and they WILL HELP!

Use a framework, test not only the code does what it says on the tin, but does it in an efficient and timely manner which does not cause the whole system to suffer.

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Configuration Management

Configuration management involves knowing the state of all artefacts that make up your system or project, managing the state of those artefacts, and releasing distinct versions of a system.

(Yes, it's from ITIL. But don't tell Eileen we use it ...)

There is more to configuration management than just source control systems.

Knowing how your project interacts with both the hardware it is running on and the other systems running on them is vitally important for a good CM strategy.

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Quality & Defect Management

It is important to establish quality priorities and release criteria for the project so that a plan is constructed to help the team achieve quality software.

As the project is coded and tested, the defect arrival and fix rate can help measure the maturity of the code.

Admin and Environmental testing is also very important for Admins!

It is important that a defect tracking system is used that is linked to the source control management system.

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Deployment

This is where control of the project SHOULD be passed temporarily to your Admins

This is what they do, so let them control the deployment of your application.

If your testing has gone well, there should be no issues during this stage.

However, DO make yourself available to the Admins during deployment, just in case this happens ...

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Operations & Support

Now that the application is Live, it needs to be supported.

As a Dev your responsibility doesn't end when the application is deployed

As an Admin you can't automatically blame the Dev if something goes wrong with the application

Handover, support and escalation processes are now required so that both Devs & Admins know who is responsible for what elements of the application.

This WILL make supporting the application much easier

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.

Measuring Success

The success of your project can be measured in many ways

Both formally in terms that have been agreed before hand within the in definition of the project these KPIs will cover

User Acceptance

Whether the application met or exceeded the project specifications
And... the often forgotten Administration opinion on the impact both positive and negative of the application on the platform(s) that it is hosted on

Together these will define your team's success or failure on any particular project

My hope is that this session will get you into the habit of looking at not just the Domino Server services you support and administer, but the overall hardware, software, network & environmental components that make up your server infrastructure.

It's important to understand the impact the infrastructure surrounding and servicing the Domino Server has upon it, in terms of how it affects overall Domino Server performance, and more importantly, how it affects user perceptions within your organisation.

Stress that a lot of this session will be spent reviewing the configuration & placement of key infrastructure components, which may be obvious to some, but not all, audience members

This session can be useful for assisting in Domino Server Migration planning, as well as performing problem diagnosis or regular health checks on your infrastructure.