IBM Technote: What was done to improve the performance of the Lotus Notes client from 8.0.1 to 8.0.2 and what were the results?

August 26 2008

While I've been documenting the progress on Notes 8.0.2 memory and performance all throughout beta, now that the release is out, you can all see the results.  The tweets and blog posts today have been mostly positive.  Be sure to post issues in the Notes/Domino 8 forum or open support incidents... it seems that a couple have been reported related to upgrade (versus clean install...not that you should have to clean install, but it seems to be where there have been a few reports this morning).

At any rate,the big question is, is it faster?  And from what I've read, the answer is resoundingly "yes".  Some have wondered why, or if so, why wasn't this optimization done sooner?  We had an internal discussion of the best way to present these improvements to you as customers and partners...and I advocated for the honest and direct approach.  You need to know that it's better in 8.0.2, and likewise in 8.5, and that you'll see the results of our work immediately.

In the spirit of open disclosure, then, Lotus Support has published a technote highlighting what work was done for Notes 8.0.2 performance:

With the many pieces of Notes, this has been a resource-intensive task, but one that is well worth it to give our clients the best possible experience. This information is given in an effort to help you better understand the kinds of things that we have been working on. The bottom line is that we have looked into many areas where performance can be improved and will present a faster experience in Notes 8.0.2 and Notes 8.5 compared to Notes 8.0 and 8.0.1.
Read all the details... (Gregg Eldred has also posted on this)

Link: ibm.com technote: Performance improvements from Notes 8.0.1 to 8.0.2 >

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [32]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Christian Henseler  | 8/26/2008 12:32:21 PM

    I've done some tests today right after 8.0.2 was released and reported them on vowe.net.

    In contrast to IBM's measurement of start-up time, I've measured the time from double clicking the shortcut icons until a user was able to click the mail icon on the default welcome page (while IBM is measuring from double clicking to PW dialog).

    I've done 5 tests each and the average time was reported on vowe.net.

    Althought the reported respone time is not as good as IBM's numbers in absolut values, it's the same trend.

    Start-up time is dramatically improved in 8.0.2, in my tests round about 30 percent.

    I can't say to much to other metrics, because I am focussed on 8.5 and I've only done a quick test.

    I've problems when upgrading one single Lotus Notes client from 8.0.1 to 8.0.2, but I can't tell if this is a general problem.

  1. 2  Doug Conmy  | 8/26/2008 1:26:59 PM

    @Christian The performance tests that we (IBM)perform include both the time from double-click to password, and password to welcome page. We model a 5 second time period for the user entering their password.

    The reported times and improvements are the sum of these 2 values compared against the 8.01 build. We measure both cold, after OS restart, and warm numbers.

    We have found that defragmenting the system at least once after installation can have a significant impact on startup.

    Doug Conmy

    Notes Client Lead Architect

  1. 3  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 8/26/2008 1:44:13 PM

    I haven't yet finished it, but sometime in the next 48 hours I should have detailed metrics in real world scenarios for 8.0.0 thru 8.0.2 (including Beta 2 and Gold).

    Disabling Symantec Corp 10 from scanning the Lotus prog folder still helps a hell of a lot, but we now have clients who can and will move from R6 and R7 to 8 due to the reduction in RAM and improved start up times.

    Now if only we could get the install time down ;)

  1. 4  Peter Wilson  | 8/26/2008 4:17:34 PM

    Getting faster with less memory ...hooray. Now I can run 35 (8.0.2) vs 30 (8 and 8.0.1) Notes client on my Citrix server now - grin.

    Pete

  1. 5  Dave Winter  | 8/26/2008 4:56:29 PM

    I'm still downloading but have had 8.5 Beta for a while and noticed significant improvments in that release. For me the fact the IBM spent time on this is is the wow factor, and continue to work on it. Some companies release software and don't update it for several years....

  1. 6  Scott Edwards  | 8/26/2008 5:42:27 PM

    It's great to see a large corporate software vendor offer good old honest disclosure for a change rather than pull the brightly coloure shrink wrapped wool over our eyes at every move.

    Thumbs up to Lotus/IBM on this one.

  1. 7  Mike Brown  | 8/26/2008 7:58:25 PM

    Storming speed improvements in the Windows version. Really, it's like night and day when compared to using any previous version of 8.

    Still need to work on the Symphony start-up times though. It's still 20 seconds to create the first document in a session, although it's nice and fast thereafter.

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 8  Erik Brooks  | 8/26/2008 9:32:02 PM

    I'm with @6 - This new "IBM Openness" around Domino is remarkable. I've now seen John Curtis (Domino Database Tech Lead) and Doug Conmy both post in blogs over the past few months. Awesome.

    I wonder what percentage of IBM/Lotus developers can/will now be moved to enhance other areas of the product?

    On a related note - The Fix List DB lists changes in x.0.1, x.0.2, etc. Why not x.0? There are undoubtably some specific SPRs that are corrected in major releases.

    I actually submitted a non-technical PMR a while back asking IBM to provide info about major "behind the scenes" changes in .0 releases.

    For example, we were experiencing horrible (every 48-72 hours) semaphore race conditions on servers running later versions of 6.5.x After months of diagnosing / troubleshooting, I was casually told that 7.0 had an entirely different semaphore structure.

    "Uh, that might add some weight to our upgrade plans!" So we did a faster-than-you-can-spit upgrade test and rollout, and the problem disappeared. We couldn't have been happier.

    But if somebody "on the inside" hadn't mentioned the new semaphore structure, we might have still been plugging along for months troubleshooting the problem.

    Congrats on everybody @ IBM/Lotus for this release. To hear that a Java-based implementation "approaches ND7" is impressive.

  1. 9  Christian Tillmanns  | 8/27/2008 1:33:52 AM

    I switched from 8.5 to 8.0.2 and the latter is much faster. I would say it is a lot faster then 8.0.1 too... except! the internal browser. In 8.5 the CPU load jumped to 100% whenever the internal browser was used and it took ages to load a page and it was impossible to post a comment like this one. In 8.0.2 the browser is faster, but it is still impossible to post a comment. That shows a trend. I know this is IE, and probably not a Notes issue. Others reported this problem in the 8.5 forum.

    The first 3 restarts of the client where failures but now it seems it has settled in in.

  1. 10  Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 8/27/2008 2:31:32 AM

    A couple of questions:

    Will the next beta of Notes8.5 include the performance enhancements of Notes8.0.2?

    Also, hearing a lot about performance improvements on the Windows client, will the same improvements be true of Linux and (in 8.5) Mac?

  1. 11  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 8/27/2008 5:03:05 AM

    Whoever proof read that technote should be shot!

    I remember when technotes used to take a good 3 or 4 levels of checks before publication. Grammar like that would never have been allowed through. I tried the translate to English option without success :O)

  1. 12  Ian Scott  | 8/27/2008 5:16:14 AM

    This is much better performance.

    We have had an error message after upgrading each client in our pilot but we can easily live with that.

    For us the show stopper with 8.0.1 was an issue with focus on screen - the browser launching when scrolling in the inbox and even the client taking focus when in other applications plus the screen 'blinking'. I've been running 8.0.2 since yesterday afternoon and these issues seem to have been fixed. Really delighted with that.

    So far so good. We need a bit more time with it but at the moment this looks like something we can deploy in production. It feels right.

  1. 13  Dave Price  | 8/27/2008 5:32:13 AM

    Quick question.

    When will the incremental installers be available. I have some 8.0 clients I would like to use Smart Upgrade with.

    Thanks

  1. 14  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 8/27/2008 6:34:11 AM

    @Ed - Following your request I've just raised 4 PMRs with IBM relating to 8.0.2 which I expect to hit SPR status.

    1) Can't install to a machine without a c: drive

    2) Blank inbox tab after upgrading from 8.0.1 to 8.0.2 - reproduced on all 4 upgrades so far.

    3) Installer does not clean-up post install leaving 500MB of files in temp folder - the 8.0.2 installer actually asked whether it should overwrite the 8.0.1 files that were still there.

    4) Sametime IM not multi-threaded - Regression from R7.

  1. 15  Ian Scott  | 8/27/2008 6:53:32 AM

    @9 - I posted my first comment @12 using the browser. No problems here!

  1. 16  Scott Marchione http://Scottmarchione.Blogspot.com | 8/27/2008 7:28:25 AM

    I was lucky enough to get the download early yesterday morning, just minutes before the T1 took a dive (Thanks AT&T, you can fix it now). So since I had a lot of internet-less time on my hands I deployed 2 installations of Domino 8.0.2, and 3 installs of Notes 8.0.2. The Domino installs went great, I put them on our test servers that are running evaluations of Sametime 8 and Quickr 8.1, both on a VMware emulation, both with very little resources allotted to them (1gb mem, (1) 2.4GHz cpu)and both installed and came back up without a hitch or hiccup! Now the Notes installs are a different matter. I had been running 8.0.1 on my laptop for about 2 months with decent performance and so-so stability (just can't get that feeds widget to not crash my client!), and I was excited to see some of the fixes listed were issues that I had experienced. So I decided to upgrade my computer first, and as some have noted above, the installer found most of the 8.0.1 temp files with the same name, and asked to overwrite them...fine I can live with that. What followed was a 25 minute marathon of watching the content of the package be examined, and then ever so slowly unpacked and deployed to the correct location, but like I said, no internet access in the office, so there wasn't a lot of work on the plate. Right away I found the load much slower then 8.0.1, I didn't see the load progress bar the entire day, just the splash screen, although I did see it this morning. The Sametime log-in is annoying. 8.0.1 I could save my password and just click on the bubble window and say Log in as available, 8.0.1 I can do the same steps, but I'm now required to click on the Log On button for the configuration window, even though my password is saved, I still have to do the equivalent of saying "Yes, I really do want to log on!" What I say to you next is an admission of SOP ignorance....so please, no taunting....

    I deployed the other 2 installs to the IT managers *cringe*

    The top dog had the same issue with Sametime that I did, as well as the Feeds widget issue, I think it doesn't like our proxy server, but I'll have to dig into that a little more.

    Number 1 aka my direct report, had an interesting "issue" both he and the big guy upgraded from 7.0.2, and used the integrated Sametime client, but Number 1 had a leftover from that integrated client... the pop out buddy list! It loaded! seriously! weird. So I have 2 more installs to complete for the other folks in the department, and I think I'll just ask them to do it and I'll take a long lunch or something..

  1. 17  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 8/27/2008 7:30:51 AM

    I haven't touched 8.0.2 as I've been working with 8.5 daily builds. What I've observed is much better memory utilisation - things don't take up memory until they're used and memory is freed more readily. Sitting side by side with a colleague on 8.0.1 we were observing somewhere between 30 to 100 mb less in memory with the same set of functions in use.

    Warm restart is MUCH faster, it's about 3 seconds once the password has been entered (and remember, that now comes at the start of launch sequence). If improvements carry on like that until the GA of 8.5 it'll be loaded before I click on the icon ;o)

  1. 18  Doug Conmy  | 8/27/2008 8:33:56 AM

    @Stuart

    My Colleague, Matt Babaian has posted comparisons of 8.01, 8.02, 8.5 Beta 1 and 8.5 Beta 2. From this document, you should see that there has been significant progress between 8.5 Beta 1 and Beta 2 with respect to performance.

    The information can be found in the Notes/Domino 8.5 Forum here:

    { Link }

    Doug Conmy

  1. 19  Ian Scott  | 8/27/2008 9:13:24 AM

    @16 - someone I just upgraded from 8.0.1 gets the floating R7 buddy list. WTF! I don't know how to stop it.

    My experience is that Sametime will auto log on after the 2nd or 3rd attempt.

  1. 20  Ian Scott  | 8/27/2008 9:16:03 AM

    By attempt I mean restarts of the client.

  1. 21  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 8/27/2008 2:54:19 PM

    @16, that used to happen in Beta 2 of 8.0.2 but I have yet to see it appear in 8.0.2 gold. The sametime of yesteryear ;)

  1. 22  Scott Marchione http://Scottmarchione.Blogspot.com | 8/27/2008 3:04:18 PM

    the "Left Over" buddy list has seemed to resolve it's self, but I still don't see any of the goods for the cold boot, the warm boot is much better today however...

  1. 23  Marshall Wilensky  | 8/27/2008 3:28:56 PM

    You mean the performance improvement wasn't due to Development finally implementing the NOTES.INI parameter GO_FASTER=1 ? Wasn't it first proposed for a 3.x release?

  1. 24  Roger Rowan  | 8/28/2008 1:05:35 PM

    While I've read more posts than I can remember about the vast speed improvements in 8.0.2 from 8.0.1 and 8.0, I've not seen any change in the cold start on an 8.0.2 Notes client. While the password dialog comes up faster the overall load time to the Getting Started tab is virtually identical as 8.0.1 at 60 seconds. Granted the warm start to Notes is very fast but this is not really that important for me and my users who typically stay in Lotus Notes all day. So where's the speed improvements. I run an IBM laptop 2.0 GHz with 1.5 GB RAM and plenty of free disk space it takes 60 seconds to get the Notes client up and running which is nearly the same as when I ran 8.0.1. Help me understand how to see these improved performance claims about load speed. I do like the scrolling status bar while it loads so at least you know that something is happening. These same results have been duplicated on two IBM desktop PC one with 512 MB RAM and the other one with 1 GB RAM.No difference between cold starts on the desktop PC version 8.0.1 and 8.0.2

  1. 25  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/28/2008 1:58:32 PM

    @24 so I have seen a few postings like this.

    The reality is, there are still MANY variables that can affect startup time. At one retail customer, we learned that the desktop security software in use was scanning every single file as it was loaded into memory. That had a severe negative impact, whether or not we made improvements.

    You should also look at what tabs you have loading at startup, what background agents, things like that. Do you have a Symphony program starting? Logging into Sametime? The startup sequence as well as complexity can be a major impact.

  1. 26  Scott Vrusho  | 8/28/2008 4:29:47 PM

    @24 Doug Conmy posted earlier that a post install defrag can really help. We've seen upwards of 20-30% improvement doing a post install defrag. That along with the recommendations from Ed are encouraged.

  1. 27  Ian Scott  | 8/29/2008 3:54:59 AM

    I spoke too soon. The screen has started blinking and we're getting focus issues :(

  1. 28  Roger Rowan  | 8/29/2008 8:08:11 AM

    I'll try the post install defrag. Sorry I failed to mention the desktop AV testing as well. I thought my desktop AV might be posing a problem so I stopped all AV services and ran the tests again with the identical result.

  1. 29  Brian Parker  | 9/2/2008 3:27:48 AM

    Really fast and no issues.

    Thanks a lot IBM!

  1. 30  Jeff Mantz  | 9/5/2008 12:13:37 PM

    I have seen the performance improvement on the 8.02 client on Citrix documented a number of places. Can anyone shed any light on the amount of system ram used on the 32 bit tests?

    Also, 2 issues noticed on 8.02.

    1. When selecting a message and reading in the preview pane, the message is not marked as read. It does not mark as read until fully opening it. I have not seen a setting to change this.

    2. When you open and email and send a reply, if you hit the ESC key to close the original email you get an error message "an error has occured. see error log for more details"

  1. 31  Jeff Mantz  | 9/5/2008 3:35:21 PM

    Just to update from port #12, the 2 issues listed were resolved. #1 there is a setting not enabled by default for the preview pane. #2 was mailfile corruption.

  1. 32  Dave Neasbey  | 9/29/2008 6:16:44 PM

    I'm reporting this here as it is the best result I've had from searching the internet.

    I'm using Notes 8 (Revision 20080809.0430 (Release 8.0.2)) and even when the option to "Mark documents read when opened in preview pane" is checked in the preferences, documents are NOT marked as read. (As noted above, it was not enabled by default - not a wise decision IMO)

    I have restarted the Notes client but I'm unable to make this option work again. It's frustrating to have to press "insert" for every mail I've read in the preview window.