I had a customer contact me recently asking about identifying why one of their IBM i LPARs had so much additional disk space consumed compared to another LPAR that hosted the Domino cluster mates.  The primary server hosted 4 Domino servers and the secondary LPAR hosted only 2 Domino servers.  The two additional servers on the primary LPAR were both Sametime Community servers, which typically don’t consume much disk space.

I used the disk usage utility to collect information on how much disk space each Domino server consumed.  The output is in the table below.

The Domino servers on the primary LPAR were consuming 843.34 GB more disk space than the servers on the secondary LPAR.  The two Sametime servers were a minuscule portion of this  discrepancy.  There were some databases on the primary servers (MAIL03 and COLLAB03) that were not on the cluster mates, however those databases only accounted for about 150 GB of space.  So what was causing such a disparity in the amount of space the primary servers were consuming compared to the secondary servers?

The culprit turned out to be the data in the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT subdirectory of the MAIL03 server.  This subdirectory alone was consuming 643 GB of disk space and contained 10,641 files.  My customer asked the best way to clean the directory up and how to prevent this run away disk space situation from happening in the future.  This is very easy to accomplish through a feature that has been in the product for many years but is rarely activated.

The feature is enabled in the Configuration Document on the Diagnostics tab.  Set the parameter ‘Remove diagnostic files after a specified number of days‘ to “Yes” and then specify the number of days diagnostic files can remain on the server in the ‘Number of days to keep diagnostic files‘ parameter.  The default is 365 days.  This can be set to a lower value.  I would recommend keeping at least 30 days of diagnostic data, maybe even 60 to 90 days.

The graphic above shows adding this to the Default Configuration document so all Domino servers in the domain inherit this setting, however it can be set for a specific server as well by editing the Configuration Document for that one server.

It’s that simple!

I had the opportunity to present at the Engage 2016 user group conference last week in Eindhoven.  I was extremely impressed on all levels.  Thank you to Theo Heselmans for the opportunity to speak at this event!  The session titles, abstracts and links to the presentations on SlideShare are below.

Adm02 Be a Domino Detective: Tackling Your Toughest Performance Problems

Link: http://www.slideshare.net/kkgreene/adm02-be-a-domino-detective-tackling-your-toughest-performance-problems-60128562

Abstract: Become a Domino performance investigator.  This session will teach you industry best practices for Domino performance optimization.  Learn how to take abstract symptoms like “Notes is slow” and break it down to a resolvable problem.  See the methodology and tricks involved to find the true culprit using tools such as semaphore timeouts, memory dumps and server monitoring.  Understand what impact running with obsolete tuning parameters can have on your environment. You will learn the best tips to implement along with do’s and don’ts for ensuring your Domino environment will perform optimally.

Adm07 The Health Check Extravaganza for Social and Collaboration Environments

Link: http://www.slideshare.net/kkgreene/adm07-the-health-check-extravaganza-for-ibm-social-and-collaboration-environments

Abstract: Are you concerned about your infrastructure being configured correctly? Do you have problems happen that you don’t know how to prevent? Do you think your servers might have room for improvement? Wonder no more. This session will show you what you need to be looking at to ensure your server environment is running as cleanly and efficiently as possible. You will learn what you need to be looking for in your server configuration, problems found at numerous customer environments and what steps should be taken to remedy the various situations covered in this session. Be preventative, not reactive! Performing a health check is one of the most economical ways to ensure your social and collaboration environments are running properly.

One of the critical things my company does for businesses is keeping their IBM Collaboration environments healthy.  We do this by reviewing the current environment and infrastructure, detailing our findings and making specific recommendations for improvement.  In doing this work, we have noticed patterns of findings.

At the Connect 2016 conference, myself and my colleague Luis Guirigay are presenting “The Health Check Extravaganza for Social and Collaboration Environments“.  We will be sharing with you our collective knowledge of our experiences in working with numerous customers in evaluating their collaboration environments.  We will share with you what you need to be looking at to ensure your server environments are running as cleanly and efficiently as possible.  Our goal is to be preventive, not reactive!

Performing a health check is one of the most economical ways to ensure your social and collaboration environments are running properly.  I hope to see you at our session today, Tuesday, February 2nd, at 1:15 PM in room Lake Highland.