This past week, I've been delving back into the world of Domino administration for a client and taking the opportunity to brush up on the niceties we've gotten in the past few releases. A few things struck me as I went along, so I'll list them here in no particular order.

Containers are the Way to Go

This isn't too much of a surprise, I suppose, but I imagine the only reason I'll set up a server the "installer" way again is for dev servers on Windows. Using Docker just skips over that installation phase completely and makes things so much quicker and more consistent.

It also essentially forces you to make an install-support script in the form of a Dockerfile. I started out using the default one from FlexNet, but then had a need to install fontconfig to avoid this delightful little gotcha that crops up with Poi. Since the program container is intended to be ephemeral, this meant that I had to make a Dockerfile to make a proper image for it, and now there's inherently an artifact for future admins to use.

Cluster Symmetry is a Delight

Years ago, I wrote a "Generic Replicator" agent that I would configure per-server to tell it to do the work of mirroring all NSFs. It's done yeoman's work since then, but I'm all the happier to use a built-in capability. So, tip-of-the-hat to the team that added that one in.

It'd be nice if it didn't also require notes.ini settings, but I suppose that's the way of things.

DBMT is Still Great

I know it's years and years old at this point, but I can never help but gush over DBMT. It's great and should be promoted to an on-by-default setting instead of being something you have to know to configure via a Program document.

It Still Sucks to Configure Every Server Doc

Every time I make a new server document, there's this pile of obligatory "fix the defaults" work: filling in all the stuff on the security tab, enabling web site documents, changing all the fiddly Ports tab options (including having to enable enforcing access settings (?!)), and so forth. That's on top of the giant tower of notes.ini settings in the Configuration document, but at least those can be applied to a server group and are less tedious once you know them.

I put an idea in for that last year and it sounds like it's in the works, so... that'll be nice.

The Server Doc Could Use Lots More Settings

I took the opportunity of re-laying-out servers to move as much as I can out of the data directory - namely, DAOS, transaction logs, FT indexes, and view indexes. The first two of these are configurable in the server doc, which is nice, but the latter two require specification via notes.ini properties. Since they're server-specific, it feels like a leaky abstraction to put them in a Configuration document - while it would work, and I could remove them from the doc once applied, that's just gross.

It would also be good to have a way to properly share filesystem-bound files and have them auto-deployed. For example, I have a notes.ini property in the Configuration doc for JavaUserOptionsFile=jvm.properties. The property is set automatically, but I have to create the file manually per-server. I could certainly write an agent to do that, and it'd work, but it's server configuration and belongs in the Directory.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to obliterate the container and data image, recreate them with the ID and location info, and have the server reconstitute itself after that entirely from NSF-based configuration.

HTTP is Better Than It Used to Be, But Still Needs Work

I'd love to replace my use of the WebSphere connector headers with X-Forwarded-For, but it doesn't work like that, and I'm not about to write a DSAPI filter to do it. Ideally, that'd be supported and promoted to the server config.

Same goes for Java-related settings that you just have to kind of magically know, like HTTPJVMMaxHeapSize+HTTPJVMMaxHeapSizeSet and ENABLE_SNI (I don't know why you wouldn't want SNI enabled by default).

The SSL cert manager in V12 can't come soon enough.

HTTP's better off than it was for a while, and it's nice that the TLS stack isn't dangerous now, but knowing the right way to configure it is still essentially playground lore.

Domino Configuration Tuner Deserves a New Life

I remember discovering DCT back at my old company in the 7.x days, but it unfortunately looks like it hasn't been updated since not long after that, and now doesn't even parse the current Domino version correctly. If it was brought up to date and produced reliable suggestions, it'd be huge.

As it is, my server configuration docs have all sorts of notes.ini properties like NLCACHE_SIZE=67108864 and UPDATE_NOTE_MINIMUM=40 that I saw recommended somewhere once years ago, but I have no idea whether they're still good or appropriately-sized. I want the computer to tell me that (and, in a lot of cases, just do the right thing without configuration).

Conclusion

Anyway, those are the things that came to me as I was working on this. The last few major releases have had some huge server-side improvements, and I like that the pace is continuing. Good work, server core team.