Re: Native Domino - to LPAR or not to LPAR, that is the question.

I have no opinion nor real experience to add, but what about the Domino running in the primary with the backup servers running in a separate LPAR? I offer some comments inline after each disadvantage noted.

Regards, Chuck

Neil Palmer wrote:

What is the general consensus on whether or not you need (or should)
run Domino (for email & Sametime) in a separate LPAR? I can't really
think of a lot of advantages, just disadvantages like:

- more maintenance on the LPAR for release upgrades, PTF's, etc.

Actually the maintenance for the primary is one good reason to have the servers on an LPAR. That is, the maintenance on the primary does not impact the Domino Servers which can remain active on their own partition. This is ideal where availability of the Domino supported activity is critical, even if only for its providing the interface to document why and for how long the primary partition is not available.

Additionally when maintenance is done on the Domino LPAR, that could be limited to just HIPers and Domino Groups, to limit its downtime more than for a partition providing all functions. Then additionally having the backup and primary Domino servers on different partitions allows the separation, saving from harmful changes by maintenance affecting all servers. Not only does maintenance on DomSrv1 allow falling back on DomBck1 during the maintenance, but if the maintenance should happen to leave the server failed, the issues for recovery are less drastic [i.e. find the fix to add, versus the removal of the maintenance] and possibly less urgent because the backup servers are still active where the problem was not introduced.

- a more expensive system because of the LPAR driving requirements
for additional disk controllers and disk, driving a requirement for
an otherwise unneeded expansion unit, etc.

The other copy of the OS can be cheaper; the i5/OS Application Server [Edition?]. A modified configuration can improve system performance and increase options for even further variations and/or refinements in the configuration. An important consideration is if the Domino server(s) may give rise to a requirement for more disk space, such that the boundary for expansion may be hit sooner and with more impact, to the one primary partition configuration, than if planned separately from the beginning with a secondary partition.

- more PC server like in that you end up with unused processor and
disk resources that would be better utilized if Domino was running in
the main system/partition.

The system is fairly efficient at sharing CPU, and configuration options on how to share. Is it better to add disk [and optionally balance] to the one primary partition, or to each partition as required?

I can't think of any cases where errors in Domino would cause a
production system/partition to crash - but has anyone experienced
that ?

The Subsystem gives partitioning within the main system/partition, and given the subsystem can end, then all should be well. For this reason, indeed there is a lesser need to have a fully separate LPAR or physical server as one might expect with other operating systems.