Best Practices for admins before, during, and after

moving to SmartCloud Notes

by David Hablewitz, PMP

About Me

IBM Champion

B.S. in C.I.S. from UF

Dual PCLP, R3 to V6, SA certs to V9.0

One of the first 20 BPs certified as IBM DTM

PMP from PMI

About David Hablewitz

• Principal of Divergent Solutions LLC

• Provide services in the areas of:

• System Administration and architecture

• Health checks for performance & security

• Upgrades, migrations, mergers, consolidations

• Migrations to SmartCloud for Social Business

• Project Management

• Software licensing

• Business solutions

• Email: info@divergentnw.com • Blog: http://thenotesguyinseattle.com • Company: http://www.divergentnw.com • Twitter: @davehabz

Agenda

1.Why Move to the Cloud?

2.Before the Move

3.During the Move

4.After the Move

1. Why Move to the Cloud?

• Hardware Maintenance • No calls about a failed disk drive at 3:00 AM

• No worries about replacing old servers

• Data center redundancy (for mail)

• Fewer reasons to have to be on call

1. Why Move to the Cloud?

• Software Maintenance No upgrades to…

• Sametime • Traveler • Connections

• OS

•Domino •Websphere

1. Why Move to the Cloud?

• Software Maintenance • Security by the experts

• No Microsoft "Patch Tuesdays"

• No hassles with DAOS

• No dealing with Fixup, Updall, Compact

1. Why Move to the Cloud?

More reasons

• Continuously get new features and patches

• Easier to train users of small changes

• More responsive service to bug fixes

1. Why Move to the Cloud?

More reasons

•Always on the latest version

• It sounds cool

• When things break, you can blame someone else

2. Before the Move

Get your house in order

2. Before the Move

Mail:

• Clean up mail.box. Dead Mail=0

• Get users to reduce their mail

• Borrow a truck and make a run to the dump

2. Before the Move

Directory:

• Audit the user accounts

• Audit Groups

• Re-evaluate naming conventions People, Groups, OUs, Servers

• Change mail-in Dbs into a "Person"

•Cleanup AdminP errors

2. Before the Move

Servers:

•Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

•Upgrade servers that will stay

2. Before the Move

Tools that save money, time, reputation:

• Run the OPT (Onboard Planning Tool) early in your move preparation and start working on issues ASAP

• Use other tools like:

•Panagenda’s MarvelClient

•Ytria Tools

• Double Check - iDNA

2. Before the Move

Make your own tools:

Consider having a developer create a database to gather info for Dbs needing remediation:

• Excessively large mail files

• Excessive folder count > 400 folders

• Excessive inbox size > 1000 messages

• Excessive message count: varies, but 100,000 is trouble

• Excessively large attachments

• Unused mail files

2. Before the Move

Add ACL entries to all mail files

• a group for admins

- User Type: Person Group

- Access: Editor or above access

- Roles: ExcludeDelegate

(roles cannot be added via admin client, so create an agent or use a tool like Ytria)

Repeat on mail template

2. Before the Move

Add ACL entries to all mail files

• a group for on site servers

- User Type: Unspecified

- Access: Editor or above access

- Roles: ExcludeDelegate

(roles cannot be added via admin client, so create an agent or use a tool like Ytria)

Repeat on mail template

2. Before the Move

Suggested ACL updates as viewed in the Database Catalog

SPR# GPKS6TNBN4 is a request to fix the admin client to mass-update roles in ACLs.

See Tip #3 at https://thenotesguyinseattle.com/smartcloud-tips-list/

2. Before the Move

Mail Template • Avoid customizations. IBM discourages it. They require a review by IBM for an extra fee and some changes are not allowed.

• But then customize it.

• Update the ACL with the admin group and server group

• If you plan to use SmartCloud Notes for inbound SMTP mail, then add code for Report as SPAM button (Needed for Notes client only, not web)

2. Before the Move

MMR – Managed Mail Replicas Three options:

• Implement before moving

• Implement during moving

• Implement after moving

• Organizational policies do not apply

• Before: initial replication is Faster, But filename & dir does not match server

• During/After: filename matches person doc, But users cannot include attachments in FT index

• Soft Deletions now behave on local replicas

2. Before the Move

• Talk directly with the highest levels of management.

• Make sure you know your executive management's pain points and goals.

• Keep those goals in mind at all times.

2. Before the Move

•It's all in the setup.

• The 80/20 rule of "migration" projects:

80% infrastructure setup and prep

20% moving users

• Be sure management understands this

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3. During the Move

Before the Move

DTM – Data Transfer Manager is from IBM or a certified business partner

For a smooth move, offer beer and pizza to your DTM

3. During the Move

Moving and Re-moving

•Pay attention to delegation dependencies in batches

• Expect to re-run some mail files that have errors

• Expect to create extra batches to move people that were missed or not all errors were fixed in time for their batch.

• When a problem persists, create a new replica on the staging server

3. During the Move

Soft Deletions settings and MMR

See Tip #4 at https://thenotesguyinseattle.com/smartcloud-tips-list/

3. During the Move

Delegates: Shortcuts to others' mail

• Delegates' links to others will break when other moves

• Undetected at first

• To fix, create an agent or manually make redirects (to create redirects, delete manually, not via AdminP)

See Tip #5 at https://thenotesguyinseattle.com/smartcloud-tips-list/

3. During the Move

•Sametime • No easy way to get contact lists moved. *

• Groups from Domino directory CANNOT be used. (file a PMR/SPR and vote on Greenhouse)

• Brute force method seems to work well enough.

• Profile picture cannot be added if user has only SmartCloud Notes subscription

*IMCollaboration has a tool to move buddy lists.

See me for details. Let Andy know Dave sent you.

3. During the Move

Switching inbound SMTP mail to go directly to SmartCloud

• Permitted once at least 50% of users have been moved.

• You have to ask for it.

3. During the Move

Switching your inbound mail to go directly to SC. Give it 2 weeks of processing. Questionnaire:

As discussed, having MX ownership in SmartCloud is a limited availability feature and requires executive approval. Can you please answer these questions and I will escalate the PMR for review.

1. Is the internet domain name already validated and listed as company responsible?

2. Can you acknowledge that Spam Filter behavior is different than on prem?

3. How many internet domains? Please list them

4. How many SCN subscriptions have been purchased?

5. How many users are currently on-prem receiving mail via these domains?

6. Is there a plan to move more on-prem users into SCN? If so, how many over what time period?

7. Approximate daily message volume received by these domains?

3. During the Move

Consider Keeping inbound SMTP gateway.

• Allows verifying delivery to your domain without a PMR

• Probably has a more robust feature set

• May contain Forced TLS feature if needed

• May allow attachment blocking

3. During the Move

Consider Keeping inbound SMTP gateway.

• Can also be used for outbound SMTP relay host for other servers/systems on site

• Dead mail will usually be reviewable on an on site server

• SmartCloud Mail Protector may not be as effective

• One less reason to customize the mail template

4. After the Move

Not quite time for this…

4. After the Move

The New Paradigm: PMRs

• Get comfortable with creating PMRs

• Sending an email to support@collabserv.com works

• Using the Passport Advantage portal tracks your PMRs

• Know the phone number to open Severity 1 PMRs

• Get to know your Customer Success Manager

• The CSM will be able to help manage outstanding PMRs

4. After the Move

Using the Admin client in SmartCloud Notes •Admin client Files tab is the only useful tab

• Mail files are scattered randomly on many servers

• File names are a number, not the person’s name

• Running Server Monitor can cause problems with the client

• Add a button to your Domino Directory to open the mail file of the selected user. Use the Browse button from the directory catalog.

See Tip #1 at https://thenotesguyinseattle.com/smartcloud-tips-list/

4. After the Move

User Renames • Don’t allow users to get married or divorced. But if you do…

•Don't rename a user more than once per 24hr

• Don't mess with the names fields manually

• Don't update the Internet Address field manually during a name change

•DO carefully read all articles in the wiki on renames

•DO carefully manage any directory integration

4. After the Move

Dealing with middle initials • 3 directories:

• Domino Directory

• Connections Cloud Directory

• SmartCloud Notes Directory

• Manually add the middle initial by adding it to the first name field under Manage Organization - User Accounts.

OR

• Create a view to generate the .csv for the integration server

• Process the .csv on the Integration Server

See Tip #6 at https://thenotesguyinseattle.com/smartcloud-tips-list/

4. After the Move

DDM Probes

• Setup Domino Domain Monitoring probes to alert for issues connecting to SmartCloud Notes servers from directory sync server

Contributed by Keith Brooks

4. After the Move

Moving mail after the move Inevitably there will be mail that was missed until after the DTM is gone.

Step 1: Create a local replica of source (on site) and target (SC) mail files

Step 2: Use Archiving feature in the mail file to move from old mail file to new

See Tip #7 at https://thenotesguyinseattle.com/smartcloud-tips-list/

4. After the Move

A few things you lose

• Can't use Smart Upgrade

• Client versions are not updated in the Directory

• Db Catalog does not get updated (Make a copy for your use, then clean the old one)

• Don't change the Domino Directory ACL

4. After the Move

A few things you lose

• Message Tracking is not available on SmartCloud servers

• Calendar Profiles: Beware of deleting them. The migration writes data to it once the catch up replication is done.

• IBM says you can’t use Roaming, but what they mean is the profiles can’t be stored on their servers.

5. Conclusions

• The benefits to your company are reduced labor and expertise required at the expense of flexibility.

• It allows the company to focus on its core competency

•It allows the admin to focus on strategic tasks and complex problems instead of break/fix issues

•Read the wiki and follow the rules

The cloud is a happy place!

David Hablewitz, PMP

Principal, Divergent Solutions LLC

Email: info@divergentnw.com

Blog: http://thenotesguyinseattle.com

Company: http://www.divergentnw.com

Twitter: @davehabz