Do you know about Lotus Notes 8.5.2 managed replicas?

October 1 2010

I think one of the most exciting features of the Notes/Domino 8.5.2 release is the new managed replicas option, and I ended up talking about this quite a bit in my travels the last few days.

Over the last few years, marketplace "best practice" has become for Lotus Notes users to operate their email off a local replica of their mailbox.  This is generally faster/better-performing than server-based mail access.  For Notes 8.5.2, we undertook some effort to make managing that local mailbox replica easier for the administrator and more automated.  Here's the summary from the 8.5.2 documentation:

When you create or convert an existing local replica to a managed replica in Notes, or your Domino administrator sets it for you via a policy, Notes creates a local mail replica and marks it as a managed replica. The next time you open Mail, you'll be using the managed replica, which will remain synched with the server copy without your doing anything.

A managed replica differs from a local replica in the following ways:
        •        It is created in the background while the user continues to use the server copy.
        •        The managed replica can be limited to the last N days of mail/calendar entries if local space is a consideration.
        •        Initial creation of a managed replica is controlled to minimize impact to server of multiple users/clients creating managed replicas.
        •        After creation, the user is automatically switched to the managed replica.
        •        If the managed replica needs to be fixed up, the fixup will occur in the background and the user will be redirected to their server copy.
        •        If the managed replica becomes corrupt, it will be deleted and recreated.
        •        To speed up initial creation of the managed replica, documents beyond 30 days are initially truncated bringing down part of the document and omitting attachments.
        •        New mail polling and notification is performed against the server copy.



This morning I received my first fan mail on the topic, from Christopher Gleeson at the University of Maryland business school:
I've just finished upgrading my main mail clusters to 8.5.2 specifically so I could test managed mail replicas 'in the wild' (using dynamic policies - another great feature add from a while back). I have to take my hat off to whichever team of engineers put together this solution. Although most of the technology already existed in Notes, the way they have combined them into a cohesive feature is outstanding. It works, exactly as described, seamlessly and with less than 20 seconds of administration time (note that this does not including the time spent reading and researching to make sure that something this useful was as good as it seems!).

I have nearly completed our client 8.5.1 roll-out but the way that the managed replica feature works means I'm going to implement my fastest client upgrade yet as I can think of no drawbacks to using managed replicas when the setup and usage is so seamless.

As an administrator, I think that I'd say this one manages to out-do even the ID vault.. congratulations on a great release. You just made my job a lot easier!
Can't really get any stronger than that.  Thanks for the great feedback!

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes 8.5.2  Add/View Comments [20]

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  1. 1  David (The Notes Guy in Seattle) http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/TheNotesGuyInSeattle/?lang=en | 10/1/2010 12:36:28 PM

    Cool. Just in time for me to use with a new client of mine!

  1. 2  David  | 10/1/2010 12:50:48 PM

    This is a great feature but the real power would be in extending support to all Notes applications and not just mail. Are there any plans to extend this functionality? When will that likely be delivered?

  1. 3  Jennifer Moriarty  | 10/1/2010 1:22:58 PM

    We do have extending support of managed replicas to additional Notes applications on our list of possible future enhancements. The work we did for mail was designed so that it is extensible to other apps. No specific date yet, but it is on our list.

  1. 4  Luis Guirigay http://www.LuisGuirigay.net | 10/1/2010 2:11:48 PM

    A Wiki Article is in the works right now. It will include some nice best practices and recommendations for Managed Replicas (or local replicas if you are not on 8.5.2)

  1. 5  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 10/1/2010 4:19:03 PM

    Already tried Managed Mail and decided it wouldn't work for us, although it was close.

    Ironically, one of the mail problems was that it conflicts with our email management in IBM Commonstore. We've archived all attachments over x days old and the retrieve function doesn't work when using a managed mail replica.

    Additionally, if Notes doesn't shut down cleanly (seemingly all too often these days), the client insists on consistency checking the local replica during the next restart - this results in a poor user experience.

    Finally, when switching replicas, the client loses it's place in the view. I have several hundred emails in the inbox and, when it "seamlessly" switched to my managed replica, I found it jumped to the top of the view. Of course, my unread marks were all messed up for added effect.

    We decided within 48hrs on 2 machines that we couldn't roll it out and switched back to server replicas.

  1. 6  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 10/1/2010 5:46:37 PM

    Yes, this is a killer feature. This is a topic many large organizations have struggled with (structured and organized management of local mail stores). I'm not sure but I don't think Microsoft has an organized out of the box way to manage local PSTs.

    DAOS, ID Vault, speeds ups in the client, path to LotusLive, it's really exciting.

  1. 7  Bill Geimer  | 10/1/2010 11:22:34 PM

    Wow. Let me say it again. Wow.

    Other than getting faster, and adding compression to get faster still, I don't recall replication changing as radically in all the releases I had been through since R3.

    Way to go!

  1. 8  Thomas http://www.notessidan.se | 10/2/2010 3:23:46 AM

    Question 1:

    is there a way to tell if the managed replica has been activated?

    Question 2:

    Is mail populated automatically to local mailfile when arriving to server or is this handled by the replication schedule?

    Question 3:

    How should the the setting "check for new mail every" in preferences be set up for managed replicas?

    Thanks

    Thomas Adrian

    { Link }

  1. 9  Chris Gleeson  | 10/2/2010 9:36:39 PM

    Hi Thomas,

    I don't know the answer to #1 but I'm finding that as soon as the user logs in on 8.5.2 after the policy is set it starts creating the local replica. Testing with a new client install shows the replica being created immediately. I can't see a way for the end-user to refuse having the local replica created. The user also cannot remove the local replica from the replication page nor can they delete the replica from the workspace. (Yes they can close the client and delete the local replica but it'll come back the next time they launch the client).

    Our setup on Notes R7 was most of the users running their Notes Data directory off their home network drive (yikes!), however on R8.5 they have their data local (thanks Contact Sync, ID Vault and improved roaming), although they still have a copy on their network drive for remote Citrix usage. Using the setting 'Amount of free space required before cache is created' I've set it to require 10Gb free space so the network drives don't get inundated with unnecessary replicas.

    #2:

    On the Desktop Settings Policy > Mail tab under the Client Settings sectin you can set "Enable server to poll for new mail and trigger replication on notification of new mail" to Enable and it'll replicate then.

    #3

    I also have Desktop Settings Policy > Preferences > Mail and then Mail Checking interval to "1" minutes and your client will get new email within one minute of it arriving on the server despite what you have set for the replication settings. Speaking of which, the mail file replicates at the High Priority interval.

    With regards to Ben's posting, I have all mail replicas set to replicate unread marks to all servers. Additionally having the policy setting to replicate on Notes shutdown ensures that unread marks on the server are up to date. As for the client losing it's place in the view when switching replicas, I've seen this too, however you should only be switching replicas automatically just the one time, when it's first set up. You shouldn't be switching between server and local, after managed replica is complete you'll be just on local so you won't keep switching in the view (assuming you left the Desktop Settings > Mail > Mail Settings and Mail file location to 'on Server'

    I can certainly understand the issue of the consistency check on a bad client shutdown. I'm keeping the local replica pretty small so hopefully won't take too long with a lot of truncated documents as I have the 'Auto-retrieve document setting to "Enable document with attachment". As most users were opening from the mail server, this appears to be just as fast so a smaller local replica appears to be invisible to the user.

    Also have the policy setting to create all local replicas to have FT indexes so search works just as well as the indexed server replicas.

    Chris

  1. 10  Thomas  | 10/3/2010 10:08:42 AM

    Thanks Chris

  1. 11  Doug Conmy  | 10/3/2010 12:39:21 PM

    @9 and @10

    #1 A user can see if a local mail file is a managed replica from the infobox. If you want to test programattically that a DB is a managed replica, we are fixing Lotusscript to return the property in 8.5.3.

    #2 and #3 While you should have the client poll for new mail, it is no longer necessary to have it poll frequently. You can actually set it to poll every hour or longer. In Notes 8.5.2, if there is a local replica, the client will establish a background/network session to its home server and receive async mail notifications from the server. If the connection is dropped at some point, the client will periodically try to reestablish.

    There is a policy and INI setting for ReplicaOnNewMail that can be set which causes replication to occur to the local mail file once it learns of new mail.

    On consistency checks, for a managed replica the client will perform a consistency check in the background and automatically switch to the server copy while that occurs.

  1. 12  Murray Croft http://oakmont.co.uk | 10/3/2010 1:34:49 PM

    Hi Ed -- disappointed that I won't be at LoLA -- clashed with previously booked vacation.

    Don't want to be a pain but have attempted today 3X to complete an install [not upgrade] on 8.5.2. Everything runs to the end and then throws this "Provisioning" error that has been reported. Does anyone know what the problem is. I am installing on a W32 XP Pro build.

    I have managed to complete a clean install on my XP Pro build with the same installer. Getting frustrated on a Sunday night before we head for the sun :-)

    Can you point me in the right direction ?

    Thanks and have a great meeting in Cambridge.

    Regards

    Murray

  1. 13  Timothy Briley  | 10/3/2010 1:46:54 PM

    @11 - "If you want to test programmatically that a DB is a managed replica, we are fixing Lotusscript to return the property in 8.5.3."

    Hey, give yourself a break. You aren't fixing LotusScript, you're updating it to accommodate a new feature. Never use the word "fix" when you don't have to.

  1. 14  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 10/4/2010 5:25:39 AM

    Murray, development may contact you, but you should also considering raising a PMR with support (when you can).

  1. 15  wasif farooqui  | 10/6/2010 4:55:59 AM

    A little off the topic but can anyone tell me what is the default behaviour of the local mail.box. i.e. to which server does it replicate/send the outgoing mail by default? And will it shift to a secondary server if the primary server is unavailable (the primary server and secondary server are not clustered)

    Thanks

  1. 16  Doug Conmy  | 10/6/2010 10:39:58 AM

    @15 The client will transfer mail from the mail.box to the home server specified in the current location. If the server is not available, it will try cluster members of the home server. If the server is not in a cluster, the send will periodically retry until the mail is sent.

  1. 17  David O’Neal  | 11/12/2010 11:48:27 AM

    @12 - Murray, we have seen that problem as well (8.5.2 not completing the install). I was actually one of the problem machines. The work around at this point is to completely clean the machine of references to older clients. That usually means not only manually deleting folders, but scouring the registry.

  1. 18  Symantha Gates  | 3/14/2011 1:44:42 PM

    Does anyone have suggestions re: the situations encountered by Ben @#5 ? Seems like he encountered a very different scenario than the rest of you.

  1. 19  Don Martindale  | 6/8/2011 9:05:05 AM

    @12 - Murray, we have had some trouble with this issue. It seems to be related to pushing out the Notes install via Microsoft Active Directory and Windows group policies.

    Once we cleaned up the registry to eliminate the AD push of the Notes client, we were able to install Notes.

  1. 20  David Fry http://ibm.co/davidfryuk | 8/15/2011 5:34:40 AM

    btw: The notes.ini "ReplicaOnNewMail" @11, is incorrect this should be ReplicateOnNewMail (values 1 or 0)