Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Offline folder - Running a Notes client data directory on a File Server

I know that in Notes 8 and down, running a client Notes.ini and/or Notes Data directory on a File Server is not a supported configuration

Is running Client Notes.ini and/or Notes Data directory on a File Server a supported configuration?

We are currently installed this way. If I want to remove this configuration and put all the Data files on the local drive, how would you handle this situation in your environment?
How can I back-up personal users' files (Names.nsf desktop, id)?

For our laptop users, actually, we have a batch script that copies network files to the local drive every time the users connects itself to the network.

Would it be possible to remove this batch and only use the Offline folder of Windows? The files would still be on a network drive.
Would it be useful to use .DIR files?

If I use the Offline folder via the My documents folder, would it be possible to modify the Notes shortcut to validate that a network connection eixst, if not launch Notes with the local data directory

3 comments:

MacDork said...

What is it you're trying to accomplish?

JP Liggett said...

The users performance suffers in configuration, since access to the data folder is done via network packets vs local hard drive access.

You could call a batch file from the program icon, that can contain logic to determine if the network connection exists.

If you use the network data folder as a method for backing users notes data, i suggest a couple of options

1) use a local data folder under my documents, and let the profile sync make the copy to the network server.

2) use roaming user profiles

In order to move users from the network drive, you'll need to update the registry in HKLM\Software\lotus\notes, and update the notes.ini to use new data folder references. I used a tool called inityme for this.

JYR said...

@MacDork We are trying to have better client performance, not only the Notes side, but overall form a cold start. Notes is one of the item involved.

Local access would be faster but I would still need to back-up users' file to also let the users connect themself on another computer.

@JP liggett - Thanks for the suggestion, i will look at it. I've opened a PMR with IBM about our issue. I'm looking a the new roaming feature of Notes 8.5, it seems good.