On 2 separate occasions and on 2 separate Lotus Foundations Start IBM servers, we experienced a problem where the server became inaccessible remotely and even on-site. Even the handy LCD panel buttons were unresponsive when pressed. Furthermore, since the server is used as the network’s main router, none of the workstations were able to access the Internet anymore. The only solution was to turn the server off and then back on again. However, this only fixed the problem temporarily. Within a matter of minutes the server became unresponsive again and we had to turn it off and on again to get it back up and running.

Looking at the Web console right after rebooting we could see that the server was trying to start up all of the tasks and everything looked rather normal. However, within a few minutes we noticed that the CPUs spiked and stayed that way. CPU1 and CPU2 were pegged at 100%. Eventually, the Web console was no longer responsive and it was time to turn the server on and off again.

The servers in question were both IBM Lotus Foundations Start Entry Level servers with two 250Gb Hard Drives using RAID 1. There was also a separate IDB drive used for backups.

To try to isolate the problem we tried a variety of things:
1. When the server came back up we used the Web console to turn off some tasks on the server, but the server still eventually became unresponsible;
2. Next, we removed one drive of the RAID array and rebooted again. Even booting the server with teach separate disk didn’t solve the problem
3. Removing both of the drives (and leaving the IDB drive inserted), the server did boot fine and the Internet was accessible. However, the IDB drive showed no backups to restore from so restoring from backup was not an option.

Lotus Foundations support turned me on to some IBM support articles that described how to handle disk corruption on the server. The article that I used was this one:
Checking the main disk for filesystem corruption

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21387563

There’s no need to go into detail here on how we went about getting the drive back up and running since the above article does a great job doing just that. The important thing to note is that, in both cases, the article did successfully fix the disk corruption and the server came up right away after a reboot. On one server, one file was lost. On the other server no data was lost but we were able to restore the file from a recent backup off the IDB drive that had previously registered as having no backups.

In the end, the fix was simple and the servers came back up problem free. However, it was still very disconcerting that the servers became inoperable due to the disk corruption. It would have been better if the server’s router came up without the need for disks so that everyone could still use the Internet while the server battled the disk corruption issue. Also, since the server became remotely inaccessible, we were required to go on-site to troubleshoot and fix the problem. This was a major inconvenience, but an unavoidable necessity.

We have not been able to determine the cause of the disk corruption. If we do determine the cause, we will post an updated blog entry.

We hope this posting helps other companies supporting Lotus Foundations to arrive more quickly at a possible fix when encountering similar symptoms.

We find that IBM Lotus Foundations Start Server (LFS) is a great solution for the SMB.  It is especially useful for those companies that need to either upgrade an old server or do not have a server installed yet.  With the all-in-one-server solution, we truly can provide our customers with a solution that requires very little IT oversight and maintenance.   It is a win-win for both us and the SMB customer, because, with today’s tight IT budgets, there is not a lot of room in the budget for constant maintenance and support of the customer’s IT environment.  The customers have better control of their budgets and we have happy customers.

However, we often get asked: “What about the Cloud?”

This is a very good question and one that needs to be addressed.  Why would a company want to invest in an on-premise solution such as LFS when investing in similar solutions for the Cloud can be much less expensive, initially, and the costs can be spread out over time?  Furthermore, isn’t the Cloud the ultimate way to virtually eliminate the need for on-site IT services since everything is already taken care of off-site by the cloud service company?

In my opinion, the answer is both, “Yes and No”.

Although Internet service is getting faster and cheaper, many parts of U.S. big cities, such as Los Angeles, still have very few options for reliable and fast Internet service.  This is slowly improving, but it will take time before everyone gets a fair shake at speedy Internet at affordable prices.  Why is this relevant?  Well, without reliable, fast and affordable Internet connections,  it becomes difficult to host all of your IT services in the Cloud, especially if you are a smaller organization.  For example,  if you want to share and print large files in the Cloud, if your connection is too slow or it is down altogether, this can be a major inconvenience, drastically reducing employee productivity and, potentially, bringing your entire business to a screeching halt.

In addition, not all applications are available in the Cloud yet.  Sure, you can get mail and calendaring services with no problem.  You can also backup your entire network to an online backup service.  Also, don’t forget, that most everything stored in the Cloud is automatically backed up so you don’t have the constant worry about what would happen if you lost some or all of your files.  However, a common complaint is that spreadsheet, word processing, and presentation applications, such as what are available on Google Apps, still have very limited functionality.   You still need to have a full office suite of applications on your local computer to be productive.  This can be said about many other applications, as well.  These applications are constantly being improved, but it will be some time before you can get the exact same experience in the Cloud that you get on your local computer and network.

So, this all leads into the title of this blog entry “Marrying IBM Lotus Foundations Start Server with LotusLive”.

For those of you who have never heard of LotusLive, this is most simply put, IBM’s answer to Google Apps and Microsoft Live Cloud solutions.  If you go to http://www.lotuslive.com you can see that IBM provides a whole slew of offerings geared to customers large and small.  They have matched Google’s 25Gb total mail size limit and provide a fully featured mail and calendaring solution based on Lotus Notes and iNotes.  IBM has also added other features such as Meetings, Activities, Files, etc… to enhance the user’s Cloud experience.  Go ahead and check it out!

In an ideal world it would be great if we could take the on-premise LFS server solution to provide all of the local IT functions that businesses need and marry those with IBM’s LotusLive functions.  So, users could store, print and securely share files on their local network.  However, for mail and calendaring they could be given a few options:

1. Use IBM LotusLive’s iNotes solution for a web browser only solution; or

2. Install the latest Lotus Notes client through LFS and use LotusLive’s Notes solution; or

3. Use LFS’s own Domino and Notes integrated solution as it now; or

4. Take option 3 above, but also give the option to store each user’s mail file using LotusLive’s Notes solution so that mail would also be available in the Cloud

With options 1 and 2 above, we could reduce the LFS user and server license fees by removing locally available Domino and Notes completely from the picture and point everyone to LotusLive at a separate cost.   This would make the LFS solution more affordable and IBM could still receive additional fees from LotusLive.

Option 3 would be it as it is today, but option 4 would provide both scenarios in a tightly knit package.

It is entirely possible that IBM is already working on something in this regards.  If so, that would be great!  Being able to provide multiple options to our customers would make it easier to make a sale while also giving the customer freedom of choice.  Another win-win.

It is really difficult to pinpoint one particular feature of the IBM Lotus Foundations Start server as the “killer app”.  Lotus Foundations comes with so many handy, crucial SMB tools and each and every one of them is important.  However, if I was forced to choose one feature I would probably have to choose backups.

You’re only as safe as your most recent, reliable backup.  Without a proper backup, you could find yourself spending hours re-inputting data, recreating a spreadsheet, updating your address book, etc…  We all know how important backups are, but it is often the last thing on our laundry list of business to dos.  And, even if you did regularly take backups, what is the probability that the backup was a reliable one?  How often do you really do test restores to make sure that what you backed up is actually intact?

What about disaster recovery?  Have you planned for the worst case scenario?  Sure, you’re performing backups, but are you making sure that recent backups are also being taken off-site to another location for disaster recovery purposes?  If you are, how recent are those off-site backups?

Sure, you could use an online backup service for disaster recovery.  However, that can become expensive as you amass more files and data.  If you wanted to restore from an online backup, it will take as long as the download speed of your Internet connection.  For gigabytes of data, a full restore could take hours or days.

The Lotus Foundations Start server appliance has integrated IBM’s Intelligent Disk Backup (IDB) technology into its backup toolbox.  IDB allows you to perform incremental backups as often as 15 minutes.   You can backup daily, weekly, or as often as you need to.  If you are backing up frequently, IDB also makes “incremental” copies of recently modified files.  So, if you modified a file an hour ago and the same file two hours ago, you are able to restore either file to your system with the click of a button.  This is very useful if you realize that the file you saved an hour ago was somehow corrupted or you erased important information from it right before saving it.

In addition, the backups are encrypted.  So, even if the backup drive were to fall into the wrong hands, the data is secure.

Finally, what happens if your main hard drive fails?  Well, you just push a button and all of the server configuration and software is restored in minutes.  No need to reinstall the operating system, re-configure your software, or re-assign rights to folders and printers.  The IDB  backs everything up, not just your data files.

What about disaster recovery?  If you buy additional IDB drive cartridges with the server, you merely need to pull out one cartridge at the end of the day on Friday, plug in your other cartridge and take the first cartridge home with you so the data is off-site.  The act of plugging in a new cartridge tells Lotus Foundations to start backing up the whole system from scratch automatically.  No need to let the IDB know about the new cartridge.  It is all taken care of automatically.

If the unthinkable happens, and your server at the office were to be lost in a calamity, you would only need to buy a new IBM server, plug in the cartridge that you took home with you, push a button and you’re right back where you started, since your last backup.

So, yes, IBM’s Intelligent Disk Backup technology that comes with the IBM Lotus Foundations Start server appliance is the bomb.  Finally, no more tapes, no more carrying around an external USB drive from PC to PC, and no more worrying about disaster recovery.  And best of all, no more shelling out monthly fees to continue making online backups.  Let the IDB take care of the backups for you so you can just sit back, relax and focus on work.

We’ve begun selling and explaining the IBM Lotus Foundations Start (LFS) server software appliance to existing and potential customers.  I show them a side-by-side comparison chart with a competing small business solution so that they can compare apples-to-apples.  After a short explanation, I’ve gotten comments such as:

- “This sounds too good to be true”

- “Why would I not choose Lotus Foundations?”

However, customers still show hesitation because the underlying operating system is Linux and there is concern regarding interoperability with Windows.  Of course, we know that we can load a virtual environment with Windows on it, but that is not the same as having the whole appliance running Windows.  This is not a show stopper by any means.  Customers are wowed (as I stated above) by all that LFS can do and they are pleased that they are now afforded a choice in the SMB market.  At the same time, LFS is a significant upfront investment for smaller businesses, so they want to vet this new opportunity before taking the leap.

I’m confident that LFS can hold its own as it really is not “too good to be true”.  It is truly a great solution that, not only offer SMBs a stable and reliable alternative,  but, also, I believe will allow SMBs to streamline their IT infrastructure while also allowing them to spend more time focusing on their core business.

A potential customer for IBM Lotus Foundations Start (LFS) server recently inquired whether the server appliance is able to support a RAID configuration.   At first, I thought that a RAID configuration was not supported.  However, after some research this is what I found out.

First of all, you may already know that the LFS server appliance advertises its inclusion of Intelligent Disk Backup (IDB) for true disaster recovery by taking incremental backups, as often as every 15 minutes, of all data and operating system and software settings.  However,  if the very unlikely event that the main hard drive fails for whatever reason, the server is only available in minimal operational mode until a full restore is possible.  Of course, a full restore can occur in minutes with a push of a button, but this can still be an inconvenience for a business in the middle of a business day.

If the LFS server appliance could also support a RAID configuration, then downtime could be drastically minimized with a hard drive failure.  After looking over the LFS administration manual, I was able to verify that a RAID configuration is possible.  In fact, with only a few clicks, LFS can put a RAID configuration into place quickly and easily. RAID 1 is supported if you 2 main drives of the same type, and RAID 5 is supported if you have 3 or more.  So, from the software standpoint, RAID is obviously supported.

If you look at the server appliance hardware specifications neither the Entry Level or Advanced Level servers from IBM make any mention of RAID.  Both server types come with one 250Gb main drive and a 500Gb (Entry) or 1Tb (Advanced) hard drive for IDB backups.  This is not a supported RAID hardware configuration.  So I inquired further.  What I found out was that you can add additional 250Gb hard drives to the standard server configuration to achieve RAID through the software configuration process.  You just need to specifically request the extra hard drives be added.

So, it appears, that RAID is an “unadvertised” feature of the LFS server appliance that will make this an even more appealing all-in-one-it-solution for SMBs!