MTBF 8.5.x – Mean Time Between Failures Sandbox app updated for Domino 8.x – Credit to John Paganetti
What is MTBF? It stands for Mean Time Between Failures. That’s a statistical term for describing how often your servers go down and for how long. In this case, it is also the name of a tool that captures vital information about every time a server is shut down or crashes anywhere in your environment. It tracks when it went down and for how long. It does this automatically whether you remember to post a change in change control or not. It even has a place to post comments about the event. It also provides % up-time measurements and other statistics. When you say your servers had an availability of 99.999%, over the past 5 years, now you can prove it. This is all stored in a database where you can let management see just how robust and solid your Domino environment really is. No longer do you have to take a beating for network outages that made it look like Domino was down. You’ve got the proof! And the nice thing is how easy it is to implement. A small .EXE is run every time the server is started and it is run once a day to collect stats.
This is total plagiarism, but I give full credit where it is due. John Paganetti of Iris Associates Inc. (IBM) is the developer responsible for this application. The original version (which worked on R5 to ND7) was posted in the Sandbox at LDD. But as you all know, The Sandbox was taken down, so there was nowhere for this updated version to be posted. A while back, I made a post on IdeaJam requesting that MTBF be updated to work on 8.x and John graciously fixed it and sent me the code. Now I am sharing it with you. It’s in the sidebar on the right, in the flash widget box.
Recently I posted on IdeaJam requesting this tool be added to the standard software. Please go there and vote for it. The complete instructions on implementing it on your servers can be found in the Help Using document of the database. Below is an excerpt of the first steps involved. Also check the Help About document and if you get the chance, drop John a note of thanks for a cool tool.
Mean Time Between Failure Installation Instructions
First Server Installation:
Place the MTBF executable in the Notes Program Directory on your Domino Server.
Place the MTBF.NTF template in the Notes Data Directory on your Domino Server.
From an Administrative Client: Create a New Database MTBF.NSF using the MTBF.NTF Template
At the Notes Server Console: > load mtbf -a
The -a is only necessary if this server has not yet been “added” to the list of servers to be monitored.
Wait until the task runs to completion. From the Notes Server Console check it’s status by doing performing > show task until MTBF task no longer appears.
Verify your first server has been added appropriately by opening MTBF.NSF and view 1) Server Information.
Now is a good time to update the MTBF.NSF ACL. It is recommended that the Server Group LocalDomainServers has Manager Access. The rest is up to your discretion.
Add MTBF to the ServerTasks = line in your NOTES.INI on your Domino Server.
(Crash and Shutdown information will be updated each time the server is restarted when MTBF runs the first time)
Add MTBF -F to the ServerTasksAt5 = line in your NOTES.INI on your Domino Server or create a Program Record for this server to run MTBF -F once a day or every other day or once a week … based on your desires.
(This will perfom the once a day exhaustive log searching and compute intensive mean time calculations and statistic generation)
Create a Program record for this server in the Name & Address book to periodically run MTBF
(Very fast and Inexpensive operation to update Server Elapsed Time in 1) Server Information view.)
(Recommend hourly update but you may choose less often, but do not recommend more often.)
IdeaJam Post: Pull system templates from another server when configuring a new server in the domain.
As Lotus professionals, we have a unique venue to give IBM our ideas to improve the products and to participate in discussions and even vote on others’ ideas that we would like to see. Visit http://www.IdeaJam.net I just posted an idea there about providing the option to pull system templates from another server when configuring a new server in the domain. This would work similar to how it pulls the Domino Directory from another server. The advantage is that you probably already have your templates setup the way you want them, including ACLs and maybe even with new replica IDs. Yes, you can manually copy those templates over via the OS after you install the software and before you start the server the first time. But that could be automated to make our lives easier. Check out my post at IdeaJam, vote for it if you like it and leave comments there where IBM and everyone else can join the discussion.
Japan Disaster strikes home for me. (This has nothing to do with Lotus Notes..or does it?)
I want to share with you a Facebook post from my friend’s wife. I have known his family for 20 years. We were neighbors when I lived in Greenville, South Carolina. Growing up, he and his brother spent many hours exercising my black lab. They are now grown and married and have children of their own. Jessie lives in East Lansing, MI. Gabe lives in a small coastal village with his wife and daughter. The village is Ofunato, Japan. A Detroit TV station picked up this story. Check out the video: http://www.clickondetroit.com/video/27212569/index.html
Here is her post:
Stephanie Craft~ Monday March 14, 2011
On Friday afternoon as you all know an 8.8 magnitude earthquake shook the country of Japan. Gabe was at school across the bay and I was home in Jinomori with Violet. When the earthquake started I ran outside with Violet. We had no shoes or coats on as it happened so suddenly. I struggled to make it down the street to where my some of my neighbors were standing and holding on to some steel poles. They held out their arms to me and then we all wrapped our arms around Violet. She began to cry and the shaking became more and more severe and also probably because my heart was beating out of my chest. There was an explosion at the power plant that we could see from where we were standing and we all screamed out loud as the sparks flew. Finally the shaking subsided and we all stood around waiting to hear the announcement to follow. Violet was screaming so loudly that I could not hear the announcement at all. I stood there as long as I could but we were both getting cold so I started to walk back in to my house thinking it was all ok. Just as I arrived at my house my dear friend Junko Mino drove past and shouted out my name. I was so happy to see her and she immediately said there is a big tsunami coming please get in my car. I ran to the door of my house and was able to grab shoes for me and Violet and our coats. They were by the door so I didn’t even have to go inside but I did see everything in my kitchen on the ground. I had my cell phone and ran back to the car and we drove away. I tried to call Gabe several times but everyone was doing the same thing. I could not get a connection. Finally just before the service cut out we connected and I said where are you? He told me his location and I told him I was going to the hospital because it is the highest place in our town. Junko dropped me off there and then went to meet with her family. I went inside and they were setting up triage in the entry ways. I stood there in the entry as the aftershocks continued to shake the earth. A former student of Gabe’s and her mother arrived with her 1 month old twin baby girls. And we waited together to meet out husbands. After 1 hour passed I was really getting sick. Someone came in and said where is Gabe and I told them. Their eyes told me everything I did not want to know. They said the wave came and I just felt my whole world shatter. I didn’t even know the wave had come. So I stood there trying to hold it together for our baby girl. Another 45 min past and I was really hanging by a thread of hope that I would see my beloved’s face one more time. I was thinking of all the things I had said the night before and that morning. What could I have said different. Then a familiar face appeared. It was my neighbor and she shouted out that Gabe was there. I didn’t believe her though. She left and running through the doors 3 minutes later was my beautiful husband. It was the most beautiful embrace of my life. My husband my friend and love was with me again. Then we waited for news of other loved ones. That night we were told to stay in the gym of the hospital with other survivors. It was amazing to experience such kindness and grace under so much distress. We are safe and very blessed. The next day we moved to another evacuation area to make room for incoming elderly and injured. There was no lack of water or medicine but we knew the night would be another rough sleep. We decided to journey to the town where our friend Mark and his aforementioned wife, Junko, live. As we were about to leave Mark came in the room. We all embraced in tears of relief and thankfulness. Mark took us to his home and we ate and slept well. There is so much more to tell… But, we must go at this time.
We give thanks to all of you who have kept us in your thoughts and prayers. We have each other but we have lost our home, car and possessions. Many have asked how they can help. So, given the cost of shipping anything these days and that we can buy what we need here the best way to help us is to send a check or money order payable to *************** ( If you want to help this family, contact me directly or give to World Vision http://www.worldvision.org/ )
We love you all and thank you so much for all of your thoughts and prayers.
We are continuing a vigil of hope for friends not yet contacted.
Peace, Blessings & Love, Gabe, Steph & Violet
For perspective, unless someone gave them some clothes, they are still wearing what they wore last Friday.
So how does all of this tie into Lotus Notes? World Vision is the charity organization to which IBM gave half of Watson’s winnings from his victory on Jeopardy. World Vision is also a Lotus Notes shop based in the Seattle area.
The Lotus Forgot series: An alternative to a full Designer client on Mac or Linux and lesson on who develops applications
We don’t need a Designer client for the Mac or Linux. We need one for the people.
I understand the effort to create a full new instance of the designer client on a different platform is a daunting task. And in the end, who might use it? Developers. Some of those developers will use Macs at work. Some will be college and high school students. Some will be computer-savvy small business owners and entrepreneurs who serve as the CEO, CIO, developer, and user all in one. From IBM’s perspective, this may seem a rather small niche to dedicate the resources. It’s about ROI. So I propose a solution that would reach a much larger market and have a broader impact in enabling people to serve their own simple development needs:
Add basic development functionality back into the Notes client.
Yes, make the Notes client as it once was in the days before R5 when the ability to create applications was an integral part of the Notes client. What would it include? View development (which is already there), Formula language (which is already there in some capacity), and form development. Some agent development probably too. Provide people with enough to be able to serve their own basic needs without overwhelming them with complexity.
Why do this? Simple. Empower the people. Power users have always existed. They were what made the early versions of Notes so successful. It was easy for them to create their own tools in Notes and they loved it. LOVED IT! I can recall many times in the R3/R4 days when users came to me with a database that they had created or made a copy and modified it and wanted to share it with other people on their team. I took it, maybe cleaned it up a bit, and put it on the server where their whole team benefited. This was the root meaning of collaboration: Not just sharing data, but sharing solutions. By the users, for the users. It was truly Rapid Application Development (RAD). Before they had Notes, people were doing this in 1-2-3, Access, FoxPro, etc. It is no coincidence that the Notes client began losing favor among end users as soon as they lost their ability to explore what Notes can do by creating their own applications. The greatest advocates of Lotus Notes are those who can create applications in it.
People did not stop creating their own applications when the designer code was removed from Notes. But now they just do it in other tools like Access and Excel. Sure, there is also Sharepoint and Quickr, but those do not provide for PERSONAL tools. People will not “play” there they way they do with other software. Sadly, while users today are far more computer-savvy than they were in the 1990’s, they are being denied the opportunity to apply those skills to their job, at least where Notes is concerned. As a result, Notes has lost its appeal. Users have been driven away to other tools and no longer know (and have no motivation to learn) what could be done in Lotus Notes. To them it is no longer a PERSONAL productivity tool. Now the only way to get an application in Notes is to request it from the gatekeepers of I.T. It’s like building a Lego kit and giving it to a kid and then saying they have to bring it to you if they want to build something different with the pieces. Sure, the designer client is “free”, but it is not given to employees and for the most part they don’t even know it exists or how to get it.
If we are sincere in our belief that the power of collaboration and Open Source is truly for the benefit of all, then it should be made accessible to all. It should not be hoarded by the professional Domino developers of the world. It should not be locked out by the administrator who doesn’t want the additional work to manage the applications nor the I.T. director who doesn’t want to deal with losing control of application development process and his feeling of importance. Do not waste time defending this practice with the “good ol’ boy” mentality claims like “But the users don’t know how to create good applications.” or “their rights must be restricted for their own good or for the good of the company.” This is Social Business. This is the definition of Web 2.0. (See video)
Eliminate the hierarchy, eliminate the red tape. Empower the people. The more you empower the people around you, the more successful you will be. The more they must depend on you, the less you will be able to achieve. It’s the axiom of good leadership.
IBM may never feel justified in creating a full-blown designer client for Mac OS or Linux. They may never go back to having the simple developer client for the masses that was so successful. So while you wait for IBM to decide what to do, I suggest this: Let your people know the designer client exists. Make the designer client available to anyone who asks for it. I would even encourage them. If you have any programmers in the company that code in other software, be sure to give it to them.
Notes was founded on the principle of giving people the ability to create their own custom applications. (The History of Lotus Notes) That principle has clearly been forgotten.
If you agree, please vote for this idea at IdeaJam
Quick Tips: displaying filenames on Workspace icons
Perhaps long-forgotten, this is an age-old tip that I have used forever without thinking about it until someone saw me do it and asked.
First, go to the Workspace. That’s the page everyone uses for their homepage, that looks like an iPhone screen and that IBM doesn’t want us to use because it’s “the old look” of Notes.
Now click on the View menu. If Show Server Names is selected, deselect it and click on the View menu again.
Now that it is unselected, hold down the Shift+Ctrl keys and select Show Server Names.
OK, trivial. But handy when trying to clean up a user’s workspace with a mess of replicas and copies of databases. In dire cases, you may want to also unstack the icons.
Yellow by Cold Play: a musical interlude for those who bleed yellow
For those who bleed yellow…
Click to play Yellow by ColdPlay
Wonder why we never get Cold Play for the one-song act at Lotusphere OGS…
Lyrics:
Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow
I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called “Yellow”
So then I took my turn
Oh what a thing to have done
And it was all “Yellow”
Your skin
Oh yeah, your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know,
You know I love you so
You know I love you so
I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
‘Cause you were all “Yellow”
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all “Yellow”
Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know
For you I’d bleed myself dry
For you I’d bleed myself dry
It’s true, look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine
Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And all the things that you do
Shuttle Discovery Launches on Mission STS-133
We missed the opportunity to watch a live shuttle launch while visiting Florida for Lotusphere 2011. The mission was delayed, but today Discovery launched. If you have never had the thrill of watching it in person, I can tell you it’s an amazing thing. Growing up in Tampa, I had the privilege of watching the launches from my back yard. Yes, from Tampa, 100 miles away! 
I can remember watching Columbia, the very first mission, launch in 1981. I can also remember watching Challenger. While I could not be there for the launch in person today, thanks to the Internet and streaming HDTV, I had the best view possible without being there. Check out the ongoing live video stream of the shuttle mission.
You can also get cool images and information at the NASA website.
In honor of the few remaining shuttle missions (the program ends in 2011), I used it as the theme for these images in a project I’m working on.
In case you thought the student thing was limited to Lotusphere…
Kudos to GBS’ CEO Joerg Ott for keeping the momentum going on professional development for college students after Lotusphere. The following quote comes from an email sent by the Employer Relations Coordinator at University of South Florida to the student body:
“GBS CEO and Sponsor for College Day at Lotusphere2011 Joerg Ott will be visiting the USF campus and hosting a motivational presentation named “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” For those of you who attended Lotusphere2011 and did not get the opportunity speak to the dynamic and enthusiastic CEO, this is your chance to ask your questions! If you were not able to attend Lotusphere2011, this is the opportunity to meet the head executive who was instrumental in organizing the event.”
In addition to driving the College Day at Lotusphere 2011, Joerg invited 8 students in attendance to his home for an evening to mentor them where they could further develop their entrepreneurial goals. Clearly Joerg is not just doing this as a part of his job. It’s his passion. Joerg sets a great example that we can all learn from. You have your own passion. You have your own sphere of influence. Be sure those within it know your passion and are moved by it.
Public speaking tip for presenters at Lotusphere and elsewhere
Eight months ago I joined Toastmasters. I will never be able to watch a Lotusphere session (or any other presentation) the same way again. Did you ever wonder what it’s like to present at Lotusphere? On the positive side it must be rewarding just to be selected. You’ve been chosen by IBM as one who stands out among your peers. On the other hand, giving a presentation is challenging and even more so when presenting somewhere like Lotusphere in front of your peers where you are expected to be the subject matter expert. More people fear public speaking than anything else, even more than dying. For most technology experts, their expertise lies in the technology, not in public speaking. They may give presentations just a few times a year. Even without the fear of public speaking, it is difficult to be good at it without frequent practice. Imagine if you only administered your servers or wrote code a few times each year? Quite a challenge. So as you watch their presentations, keep that in mind. It’s not easy.
On the other hand, if you find yourself speaking at Lotusphere or anywhere else for that matter, consider this: you’re already an expert at your subject matter. So if you’re trying to improve the quality of your presentation, you’ll probably get the biggest return on investment of your time by honing your communication skills rather than your topic competence. There are a few speakers out there like Chris Miller and Mat Newman, who have somehow mastered the techniques AND know what they’re talking about. But for the rest of us, it takes lots of practice and feedback. And I have stumbled upon what I think is the best venue for this. It’s Toastmasters. If a Toastmasters club meets somewhere near you, join it. Toastmasters is one of the very best paths to develop good communication skills that you will find. Toastmasters is an international non-profit organization of people who want to improve on their communication and leadership skills. It’s a fantastic way to minimize your weaknesses in public speaking in a positive, supportive, and fun environment. You will uncover things like
- How many times do you say ‘uh’, ‘um’, ‘so’, or ‘you know’ while giving even a short 5 minute presentation?
- Do you commit “death by Powerpoint” (or Symphony Presentations)?
- Do you ramble on without pauses for emphasis?
- Talk monotone without any inflection or energy in your voice?
- Are your slides packed with text and complex graphics?
- Do you read your slides to the audience?
- Do you use gestures and body language and make use of the whole stage or do you lock yourself in behind the security of the podium and stand motionless?
- Do you read from a script (e.g. Open General Session!) or worse, do you try to memorize your speech?
You get the idea. Whether you are currently a presenter or aspire to become one, until you have mastered all of the skills (and even the best speakers practice to improve), you should practice and get feedback from people who know the intricacies of public speaking and can help you can improve. (I’m not talking about the feedback forms at the end of the sessions. They mostly cover content, not delivery, and the observers are not watching with a critical eye for communication skills, they are there to learn the content.) Toastmasters is a great place to do this is.
I have been in Toastmasters for less than a year and while my peers in the club give me great praise and support, I learn every time I give a presentation or evaluate someone else giving theirs. If you think you’re good enough already, check out this list of famous people who are in Toastmasters.
Lotusphere suggestion: Going virtual lightens the load, now about those Lotusphere backpacks…
How many Lotusphere attendees will be visiting their chiropractors or massage therapists this week? Wouldn’t it be great if those backpacks had a hip belt to take the load off the back and shoulders? Please put that in your evals. Every year my back and neck suffer from lugging around the laptop and other junk. It was nice to see more information was provided in electronic format, but not everything can be done that way. So please, IBM, get backpacks with a hip belt.
This reminds me of a story that one of my computer science college professors told back in the old days. It went something like this…
My professor told a story of how he was working on a military project writing software for the F-16 fighter jet. At one point in the process a military guy came to him and asked how much his software weighed. “It doesn’t weigh anything. It’s software.” The sergeant insisted that it must have a weight and that they needed to have an exact measurement as they need to measure every ounce that goes into that plane. After several minutes of arguing, the professor realized he wasn’t going to be able to convince the sergeant of the lack of mass of a program. So he reached down beside his desk and picked up a big box of punch cards — yes, those punch cards that he was using to write the software. One 3×7 card for each line of code. This was circa 1970’s. — and gave it to the sergeant and told him to go weigh it. Off he went with his box to be weighed. My guess is that as a result, the F-16 fighter could carry about 20 pounds more than anyone realizes.
The Notes Guy in Seattle 