Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum : Possible R5->ND6 roaming/multi-user procedure...

It seems that many organisations are interested in upgrading to multi-user and roaming in one hit (not surprising), and that a fair number of these have existing Notes R5 installations set up to use mapped network drives. Most of these organisations will want to maintain user-specific data in the Personal Address Book, Bookmarks database and other user data files.

From other postings in this forum it seems that there is no easy way to convert a Notes 6 single-user installation into a multi-user installation. (Confirmation, anyone?) And Betty Lorenson’s advice in this thread [ http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/DateAllThreadedWeb/8d4b2e76ed6503a085256e010052d5ae?OpenDocument ] seems to be that upgrading to roaming before multi-user is the best route (as it moves the user’s data from the network drive to the roaming server, from where it can be later replicated down to the user’s local Application Data folder.)

So while we wait for the details in Betty’s DeveloperWorks article, I thought I’d take a stab at a migration procedure (mainly as a starting point for comments and suggestions).

Scenario: R5 network to ND6 roaming/multi-user

Starting point: Notes 5.0.x clients installed with user's data on a user-specific network drive. Domino 6.0.1 or later server.

Desired outcome: Notes 6.0.1 or later clients installed in multi-user mode. Roaming users.

Step 1: Back up the entire contents of the user’s network-based Notes data directory to an accessible network location. That way you can roll-back to Notes 5.0.x if you need to.

Step 2: Work at the user’s workstation. Make sure the user has local administrator rights. (Alternatively log on as a user with local admin rights and manually map a drive to the user’s network home drive.)

Step 3: Upgrade the user’s Notes R5 installation to a Notes 6.0.1 or later single-user installation.

Step 4: Convert the user to roaming, with the ID file to be stored in the address book. (Question: If I choose the option to “Always clean up files on exit” does that add extra dialog boxes to the user’s log-on experience compared to a “Clean up after x days” scenario?)

Step 5: Make sure roaming progresses all the way through for the user, so that the user’s network-stored Notes data is now all replicated to the Domino server’s roaming directory.

Step 6: Completely uninstall Notes from the user’s workstation.

Step 7: Logged in as an administrator, install the multi-user version of your favourite flavour of Notes 6.

Step 8: Log in as the workstation’s user and set up Notes 6 for the user. The user’s upgraded copies of their personal data should replicate down happily from the roaming server. (I have slight reservations about what happens with Notes.ini during this bit. Up until now, some Notes.ini entries will have been customised for network-drive-based roaming, such as the Directory= line and the Cache= line. How will a roaming, multi-user machine deal with this?)

Step 9: Delete the user’s Notes 6 personal data from his/her network drive. (The active copy of this is now in the roaming directory, and you have an R5 backup as well.)

Step 10: After an appropriate period of mourning, delete the network backup of the user’s R5 data as well.

So far so good. A simpler version of this procedure should also work for sites moving from non-roaming R5 to roaming, multi-user ND6 architectures. Just to make clear, although I have done a fair amount of testing with roaming and multi-user configurations, *** I have not yet tested the full migration procedure above ***.

But there is one snag: If you are using the mapped-drive Notes R5 solution to roaming, it’s generally because you have more users (y) than machines (x). So once you have upgraded all the machines with the procedure above, you’ll still have y-x users to upgrade. I can only think that you’ll need to do these on one or more dedicated workstations.

There would be a couple of approaches. The production line approach would be to build a standard R5 client machine and “Ghost” this. Then, after each upgrade, you could restore the “Ghosted” image to the box ready for the next one. A lower-tech approach would be to use a backup copy of the Notes R5 program files, Windows shortcuts and registry entries (via export to .reg files). It doesn’t need to be perfect, as we are only really concerned with getting a functional-enough copy of Notes to be able to upgrade the network data to single-user Notes 6.

Steps 1-5 above would be on the migration workstation. Steps 6 and 7 would be replaced by the rebuild/re-Ghosting procedure. And Step 8 would be at whatever multi-user workstation is most convenient for the user.

Any feedback on the success of this or other procedures? Betty: Your comments would be much appreciated. Also, does anyone have any data yet on network traffic or network storage that would help compare ND6 roaming with the old put-the-user’s-data-on-a-mapped-drive approach in Notes R5?

Hope this helps someone out there!

Rupert Clayton
London