Best Practices for Upgrading to v11: Webinar Replay and Q&A

Last week, our team of global support advisors hosted a webinar on best practices for upgrading to Domino v11. If you missed the webinar, feel free to watch the replay here. In this session, we covered several topics on how to prepare for a successful upgrade including:

• Baseline monitoring: Know your current workloads  
• Evaluating your environment: Should you upgrade in-place, or do you need new hardware?
• Deployment sequence: See the order of steps to upgrade your environment 
• Preparing your environment: What to do before your upgrade 
• Application upgrades: Learn how to handle your custom apps  

 We received a lot of questions during the webinar and you can find the Q&A recap below.  

 Want to learn more about what’s new in Domino v11 before planning your upgrade? Download this deep dive to see newest features. For our technical folks, check out this support article which provides a guide on how to plan your upgrade and a step-by-step guide for Domino install, setup, and upgrade tasks.  

Q: Regarding Notes.ini, are there any tools we can use to check the values used in our Notes.ini to identify redundant ones?   

A: DCT would be a good place to start, however there is no such tool available for the same. DCT will not detect duplicates. It is a best practice to start with a new notes.ini file. 

Q: Can we get a list of Notes.ini obsolete parameters? 

A: We are working on a consolidated article and will be publishing it soon. 

Q: Is there a URL for recommend new Notes.ini settings to help weed out old Notes.ini settings? 

A: Starting with a new Notes.ini file is the best way to ensure your file does not contain outdated settings.  

Q: Can we have a mix of both Domino 9 for applications and Domino 11 for email servers? 

A: Yes, you can upgrade your mail servers to version 11 now, and the application servers can remain at Domino 9.0.1. As mentioned, make sure that you are not mixing Domino versions in a cluster. Use a test pilot to see how well your Domino 9.0.1 applications work in the Notes 11 client. 

Q: Is Domino 11 still restricted to 3 or 4 HTTP headers (via Internet Sites and Rules)? 

A: The limit is now 20 HTTP headers in Domino 11. 

Q: Will HCL be bringing back and upgrading the Domino Configuration tuner (DCT.nsf)?  

A: Please vote and comment for the idea here.  

Q: Is there a trial of Domino 11 to test the migration? 

A: If you are entitled for Domino, you can download V11 from the HCL License and Delivery Portal and can test your upgrades without needing a trial version of Domino. If you are not entitled to Domino, we provide a free trial as a Docker container (several products are pre-installed and ready to test). More details here.  

Q: Is there a procedure to migrate Domino 9.0.1 to a Domino 11 on docker? 

A: You cannot convert a non-container Domino server to a container-based server. You’ll need to bring up the Docker instance and migrate the data. 

Q: Is LEI (IEI) supported on Domino 11?  

A: Yes, it is now HEI v11.0.1 (HCL Enterprise Integrator) which is supported on Domino 11.0.1.  

Q: Is there a specific setting for Infoware UMT tool running on 8.5.3? 

A: Infoware is not an HCL product, please direct this question to your vendor. 

Q: Should I re-install Traveler if upgrading from 11.0.1 to 11.0.1 FP1? 

A:  When you upgrade from 11.0 to 11.0.1 a re-install of Traveler is needed. Simply applying FP1 does not require re-running the Traveler installer. 

Q: Are there special considerations of IBMi and/or Sametime limited use?  

A: Sametime 11 is not supported on IBMi.   

• Sametime 11 now supports 64bit Linux as well as Windows. See this requirements article for full details. 
• Sametime 11 Limited use has some post installation steps that are important, they are described in this article.  
• For Domino on IBMi, there are some specific hardware requirements in addition to the OS version that you should be aware of. Please see the system requirements for more details.  
• For guidance on installing Domino 11 on IBMi, see this article.  
• For IBMi there is also this post-installation step you should be aware of.  

Q: If we’re using Sametime limited use on IBM i, do I suppress nab upgrade? 

A:  Sametime 11 is not supported on IBM i.  Sametime 9.0.1 has not been tested with the Domino 11 NAB design. You can prevent replication of the design in the Advanced Replication properties. 

Q: This will be our first time working on a move and upgrade from mainframe to power. Do you have a guide that we can follow? 

A: From the hardware standpoint, the vendor should be able to provide some guidance. From a Domino standpoint, you can follow the guidance in this Upgrade guide.  

Q: How do you manage DAOS encryption on an upgrade using a temporary Server ID? 

A:  You can specify an alternative id using notes.ini setting, “DAOS_ENCRYPTION_ALTERNATE_SERVER_ID=otherserver.id” 

Q: Does Domino 11.0.1 require more resources compared to former versions? If there is a performance improvement, how many users can a given Domino server handle now? (Notes Standard vs. iNotes vs. IBM Verse 2.0 vs. HCL Nomad.) 

A: The number of users a given server can handle will vary depending on several factors. The amount of resources, disk, etc. plays a large role. The user behaviors (how they use their mail or applications), policies (like mail retention) all influence server capacity and server sizing.  

Baseline monitoring should give you an idea of how well your server performs today. We expect it to be at least the same or improved in version 11. Some examples of performance improvements (over 9.0.1) include tier 2 DAOS support (less disk I/O), Full Text Indexing and ODS. Vast improvements to NSF (larger ID Tables, larger folders), improvements to TXN logging. Your current OS and new OS may perform differently if you are upgrading from 32 bit to 64 bit for example.  No official benchmarking data is available at this time. 

Q: Is there a command line option to avoid the machine reboot on AIX/Windows if upgrading from Domino 9.0.1 that is enforced by the installer and cannot be interrupted by the installing user? 

A: If you choose a Silent Install it will just perform the necessary reboot if one is needed.  Manual installs you should be given the option to Reboot now or wait until later. 

Make certain you had a clean shut down before you try performing an upgrade. If any Domino files are still in use at the time of installation usually dictates if an OS Reboot will be needed before starting the Domino Server. Domino should not be restarted until the reboot occurs as that is what usually triggers the updating of the files that were in use and then Domino can be started. 

If you shut down Domino and it does not come down cleanly, you can run nsd –kill. With Domino server down, run a Domino maintenance task against a non-existent database name. (For example: “nflxup.exe doesnotexist.nsf”). This step flushes the transactional logs to disk and essentially simulates a clean shut down. 

Q: Will an updated version of the Domino Configuration Tuner Tool be available?  

A: Please vote on that idea here.  

Q: Can Domino 9.0.1 servers run the pubnames 11.0.1 template while we are upgrading the environment? 

A: Yes, of course!  

Q: Are there considerations from going from version 9 to version 11, specifically around http services? 

A: Specific to HTTP, there are security improvements. If you had configured sslcipherspec= in notes.ini, those settings have been moved back to the server document in Domino 11. New Domino security features in version 11 may interest you, such as SNI, SAN certificates, http password authentication to the ID in the ID vault, and more.  

Also, we changed the JVM from IBM’s JDK to OpenJDK. You should test any custom applications that rely on the JDK. Many of our customers are making the move to SAML authentication, which was supported in version 9 but we have made continuous improvements in this space since then. In Domino 10 and higher we are now auth-N capable, which removes the IdP limitations we had in version 9.0.1. Any SAML 2.0 compliant IdP should work with Domino 11. 

Q: Is Domino 11 NAB template also compatible with 9.0.1? 

A: Yes, it is.  

Q: Why does ODS need to be updated at the end (especially after the clients)? Shouldn’t it work to have ODS 53 on the server, with an 9.0.1 client using it? 

A: You should upgrade the ODS in order to use the benefits (especially in performance) of the new on disk structure. The ODS version is independent from the clients that are accessing the server. 

Q: ODS Upgrade is the last on your recommended list. Can it be done earlier? 

A: You can upgrade the ODS only after the server has been upgraded, however you can upgrade the ODS with the server if you want. 

Q: Why do you recommend using compact -C to upgrade ODS but not compact -ODS -* -upgrade option? 

A: Either command will work for upgrading ODS (we just left off the other one on the slide).  

Q: Is a Notes 11 Client a requirement for using AD sync? 

A: You must use the Domino 11 administrator client and have a Domino 11 names.nsf design (pubnames.ntf) on a Domino 11 server. 

Q: Can we get more detail on “switching Domino server identity”? Is that as simple as changing the server ID?  

A: The easiest way is to keep first 5 lines in notes.ini, start server, and do the server setup again. however, use option that you already have an ID at each step. 

Q: Is AdminP design backward compatible? 

A: Yes, it is. 

Q: If we are currently on 9.0.1, do we need to upgrade the names.nsf design to the latest template?  

A: Yes. Otherwise all the new settings are not available to you. The 11.x design is backward compatible with 9.0.1 servers. 

Q: How would Domino 11 affect applications running on XPages?  

A: The JVM changed from IBM to OpenJDK. If you are using JavaScript, be sure to test your application on Domino 11 prior to upgrading. 

Q: Must the Traveler Server be upgraded with the Web Servers? 

A: No, the sequence is a recommendation. You do not have to upgrade traveler servers at the same time as your web servers if they run on standalone machines. If Traveler and HTTP server runs on the same machine, then you have to upgrade both at the same time. 

Q: Will there be issues moving to hyperconvergent environment (nutanix or syneto or …) with disks tiering? 

A: Domino is blind to the lower layers of the stack – we only “see” what the operating system provides.  There are no particular Domino tuning or configuration required for HCI environments like VMware, Nutanix, et al.  (Note that your OS of choice may require configuration/tuning for the HCI platform.) 

Q: Say we have a 4-server environment. When we’ve upgraded the first server, do we need to worry about the new names.nsf replicating to the other 3 servers? 

A: You should upgrade the Domino directory template, but all the content will remain the same. The Domino 11 names.nsf design is backward compatible with versions down to 9.0.1. If you wish to prevent the design from replicating, uncheck the design box from the Advanced Replication properties. 

Q: Does the “smart upgrade” feature still work for the Notes users upgraded to version 11.x? 

A: Yes, it does. However, we have added an advance AUT feature which is better than Smart Upgrade. 

Q: I am interested in the licensing of Domino 11. Is there more information on the actual cost per user?  

A: Please reach out to your local HCL Product Sales Specialist or HCL Business Partner for licensing questions. Submit a request to have HCL sales contact you here.    

Q: Do you offer remote help to do the upgrade from 9 to 11 as part of our ongoing support? 

A: You can submit a request online to inquire about our professional services, as well as technical support here.