Symetrik Domino Consulting

Archive for the ‘maintenance’ Category

The more I’ve been reading about Exchange 2007 administration, the more it sounds like alot more work (not to mention alot more servers).

I read this blog entry at the Tech Republic Blogs titled “Scripting the remove and disable mailbox attributes in Exchange 2007”

Here’s an excerpt:

The two scenarios can be scripted out in large amounts with normal batch files. A common way to make these scripts is a concatenated formula within an Excel spreadsheet that requires only the username or e-mail address to be added to create the command, which would be copied and pasted to save or run in the Exchange Management Shell.

I do happen to be good with a command line interface and actually enjoy it from time to time as shown in this previous post on my blog about writing a Domino server maintenance script that performs several tasks and a reboot every week in what I call “Preventative Maintenance.”

….but having to use the command line, or run a batch file, and intensifying the process by using Excel just to disable or delete a user sounds asinine.

I’ve recently stumbled upon using compact -S5 in our weekly Saturday compact program document.

Like most shops, we run Fixup on Fridays and then Compact on Saturdays on all databases.

We found that a couple of servers that have about 400GB worth of mailboxes were not finishing their compact jobs. The compact was taking somewhere in the range of 36 to 48 hours. We weren’t sure how long it was taking because we had to shut it down on Monday morning when people got into the office and starting trying to access their databases.

I found the -S switch which will compact only database which will only compact databases with more white space than you specify in the . Read the rest of this entry »

I just want to mention that I love HP (and previously Compaq) servers. I love installing Windows 2003 with a Smart Start DVD and all of the HP Insight Management agents, the Windows drivers for the various systems components being installed when it’s all said and done.

I’ve been playing with the HP Systems Insight Management Console for the last few months. It’s a great tool and lots and lots of granular monitoring, patch and firmware deployment, etc.

I just realized this week that you could go to HP’s website and install what’s called a Proliant Support Pack.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I had quite a bit of fun writing and debugging a weekly maintenance script.

I use this on all of my normal servers, but today, fine tuning this for a partitioned Domino server became a little bit of a challenge.
Tailoring all of the command line input from each of the different commands took a little bit of research.

Thanks to for Jean-Yves Riverin’s FAQ article on NSD
Frequently asked question – How to analyze Notes/Domino NSDs?

I also found other bits on the input method for nserver.exe, ncompact.exe, and nfixup.exe on the Notes/Domino 6 and 7 forum: Read the rest of this entry »