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November 2005 - InsideDomino

Change Management for Server Configurations

Enhance your Domino environment by monitoring changes to the configuration and security settings of Domino servers

Even with R7's Domino Domain Monitoring, one thing is still missing from the Domino Administration toolset - monitoring and reporting of changes to any aspect of server configurations (Domino Domain Monitoring reports changes to security settings, but not to other important areas such as NOTES.INIs).

Why is this useful?

Keeping track of what your Administrators are changing in the environment provides you with :

• An audit history of changes and when they were made.
• Notifications when a change is detected.
• The ability to QA changes made by other Administrators.
• Monitoring of all configuration & security settings in the NOTES.INI file and Directory of all servers you specify, including ACLs and Administration Groups.
• Automatic comparison of server configurations, regardless of Domain.
• The ability to validate Hub-Spoke topologies, e.g. that the Directory is the same on all servers.
• Notification when servers are unavailable.
• And what's more, it's free!

IONET Ltd has released their Change Manager product (http://www.ionet.co.nz/change) as a free Administration Utility.

For each Domain, you can :

• Specify which configuration elements to return from Server Documents, Server Configuration Documents (incl. Mail rules), Program Documents, Web Configuration Documents (R5 & R6+), Administrator Groups, Directory ACL, Connection Documents, Domain Documents and Server NOTES.INIs.
• Email specific people when any configuration aspect from the list above is added/removed or changed, including what changed, when and by whom (if possible). Opening a change report will take the user to the reporting document with the change highlighted.
• Allow validation of Spoke Server configurations against the configuration described on the Hub - e.g. show that Spoke X has or has not got a correct replica of the directory from Hub Y.
• Email a list of people if a server cannot be contacted. This allows you to easily monitor which servers are available (for example first thing in the morning).
• Edit the actual Directory document on the correct server for the domain (Hub or Spoke).
• Select how often the Change Manager runs for each Domain, and how long Server Reports and Change Reports are retained for each Domain.

Additionally, for all Domains you can create dynamic Comparison Tables. These are tables of selected configuration settings (that you decide to view) for a range of servers across Domains, so that different aspects of Server configurations can be compared in one place and automatically updated. This allows you to easily see that server configurations are similar, e.g. that all Mail servers (regardless of what Domain they are in) have the same settings for MailTimeoutMinutes in the NOTES.INI, the same number of mailboxes (from the Server Configuration Document) and the same Mail tasks (from the Server Document).

"The Change Manager system has proven to be an invaluable tool for us. With such a large domain to keep track of, it has eased the ability to see when changes are made and what they have affected, and who the changes have been made by. Very easy to implement too, which was encouraging. Highly recommended." - Rachael Trudgeon, Domino Administrator, New Zealand Ministry of Health.

"I like the change logging. Now when something doesn't work and a programmer asks what changed, I can show them. It is also nice to see what is different in the INI file when setting up a new server." - Norman Sprunger, Mennonite Mutual Aid, US.

To download this free utility, please visit http://www.ionet.co.nz/change .

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