I started talking about my Domino setup a couple of days ago, in
Part 1 - History. I thought I'd continue with how it looks today.
When we had to move away from
Fredrik's employer's internet connection, we thought we might as well put our server at home. Being the nerds we are, of course we had broadband connections at home, both of us. The extreme speed of 0.5 Mb/s... Well, it was doable to put a server on it, but since we didn't want to take up all of the bandwidth for one of us, we decided to split the load between us. Fredrik got the web sites, and I got the mail. Yes, this means 2 Domino servers, with replication settings so that we would have some manual failover functionality between them.
Another reason for having 2 Domino servers was (and still is) that all we could get was dynamic IP addresses. If our ISP suddenly changed the address for one of us, the other one would still be available. The domain we started out with, and which still is our primary domain, is
pyttemjuk.nu, so Fredrik got www.pyttemjuk.nu and I got mail.pyttemjuk.nu. The Domino servers are set up so that we can change their intenet names at a moments notice. Web site settings will work even if the web site is redirected to the other server, and for those of us that use Domino databases for web sites, there will be no difference. For those that use HTML files, well, tough luck.
A while later, Patric, another collegue of mine, volunteered to house yet another server for our domain. Since Patric has a fixed IP address, this was really what we felt that we needed. We put together another server, and handed it over to Patric, who promptly installed it at his house. This server became the main recipient for incoming internet mail, but does not run any web server. Patric has his own web server, using some other software for it. My server still holds all mail files, with replicas on the other 2 servers.
As time goes by and technology evolves, broadband bandwidth increases. Today, my bandwidth is 24Mb/s downstream and 1Mb/s upstream, so it doesn't really matter who has what services between me and Fredrik. We still maintain the same kind of division that we started out with, though. The difference is that Fredrik's server now hosts a few more web sites, and so does mine. This one for example, www.bananahome.com is hosted on my server. In total, we are hosting web and mail for 5 internet domains, and mail for yet another internet domain, hosted for Björn. 6 domains in all.
So this could seem like a fairly big operation, with a couple of hundred users, right? Wrong. We currently have about 30 users, who are all friends and family of either one of us. But it's fun! I have 3 servers to play with, I develop applications for myself and for others, and I keep up with the new stuff that comes out until I get another job in the Notes/Domino arena. Most of the users doesn't use the Notes client, though some do. I've successfully forced my wife, Annette, to use it. I tried to force my mom to use it, but had to put Outlook back for her. My brother, Niklas, uses Notes, and likes it, and his wife Josefina also uses Notes. Altogether I think we're about 10 Notes client users.
As for replication, while I would normally use a hub-and-spoke topology, my three servers use a star topology. Since all three servers are running on modified home PC's or older hardware, and with more or less unreliable internet connections (although it almost always works), every server will replicate with the other 2. This goes for mail too. All mail files are replicated on all 3 servers, even though my server is the main mail server, so that if my server goes offline, or needs some maintenance, I can quickly move all mail to one of the other servers.
This approach means that it needs very little maintenance and supervision. I have events set up to monitor for possible security attacks (so don't try to break in, please
) and other problems that may arise.
The domains:
Well, that's it for today. The subject is bound to come up again, though.
Worlds BEST troubleshooting process2009-03-18 12:25
Have you ever been irritated that you need to fire up Domino Designer to create and manage your custom login forms? I certainly have. I've thought about doing something about it for quite some time, but there's always been something more pressing to do. It's not that I mind working in Domino Designer, but it feels like the wrong tool for the job. It should be administration work, not development work. There are also a lot of administrators out there, that aren't comfortable with Domino Designer.
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