Dan Silva

Yes, for those in North America (or in my case, who administer servers in the Northern Hemisphere), Daylight Savings Time is creeping up on us again.

To be better prepared, IBM will be hosting this coming February 27 a second Notes/Domino Open Mic Session this month to discuss all things DST:

IBM will host an Open Mic conference call with Lotus Development and Support Engineers to answer your questions about DST issues in Lotus Notes/Domino® on Wednesday, February 27, 2008.
Title: Notes and Domino: Daylight Saving Time
Date: February 27, 2008
Time: 10:00 am Eastern US time

Questions can be posted in advance of the call as a response to the Invitation to Notes/Domino DST Open Mic call in the Notes/Domino 8 forum.

DST in the United States is scheduled to start on March 9 and end on November 2.

Link: Notes/Domino Open Mic special session for upcoming Daylight Saving Time transition

Additional resources:

Notes/Domino Open Mic conference call: Impact of Daylight Saving Time changes
Knowledge Collection: Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Notes/Domino

Just attended a webcast today on the new Service Pack 5 to Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1, which will be adding support for Domino 8.0. It was good to hear Valerie Wang from RIM talk about the new features, and as every Product Manager will do, she did not commit to any release dates, but said “it’s a matter of weeks, not months.” Hmm… doesn’t that sound familiar?

So anyways, BES 4.1.5 now will add support for Windows 2003 64-bit. This led me to a few questions which Valerie answered in the Q&A session after her presentation:

1. Will BES 4.1.5 support Lotus Domino 8.0.1 on Windows 2003 Server 64-bit?
   No. BES 4.1.5 will only support 32-bit Domino 8.0 and 7.0.3. Support for Lotus Domino 8.0.1 will come in a future service pack.
2. Is BES 4.1.5 64-bit enabled?
   No, it still runs as a 32-bit app. Work is being done to port BES to 64-bit, but nothing is ready to be discussed in public yet. Valerie mentioned that if ISVs/Customers/anyone would like to get further details on this, then this can be discussed individually via a signed NDA.
3. How many simultaneous users will BES 4.1.5 support on 64-bit Windows 2003 Server?
   RIM is still estimating around 2,000 users/BES server, but work is being done to improve performance further.

Blackberry Enterprise Server Scalability
Also another good tip on Blackberry Enterprise Server scalability given by the folks at RIM:

• To increase scalability, decrease the amount of mail servers your BES talks to – the more mail servers you point your BES servers to, the less it will scale.
• Keep your BES server as close to your mail servers as possible – try to keep your corporate/headquarter mail servers on the same datacenter as your BES server. The fewer network hops, the better.

Interesting to hear Valerie mention how few people at Lotusphere were aware of these 2 performance/scalability tips.

The PDF slides from the webcast are available for download.

A IBM oficialmente lançou hoje a mais nova versão do Lotus Notes e Lotus Domino Server: 8.0.1. Para que você tenha em um local fácil todas as informações necessárias para avaliar e preparar melhor para o upgrade desta versão, vale a pena dar uma olhada no technote 1294941 – Upgrade Central: Planning your upgrade to Lotus Notes / Domino 8.0.1.

Uma nova novidade no Lotus Domino 8.0.1 é suporte para plataformas 64-bits (Windows Server e IBM AIX).

E não deixem de ler o Release Notes à cada nova versão do produto para estar dentro de todas as informações/problemas/soluções encontradas no produto!

Link: Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, and Lotus Domino Designer Release Notes