VMWare Server 2.0 .... very nice

I've been running VMware on my openSuse box for several months now. It has been rock solid and reasonably easy to use. This week, I took the liberty of upgrading to VMWare server 2.0. WOW! What a difference! The new console is SOOOO much better. I was able to move my old WinXP laptop to a VM image using VMWare converter. I then was able to work from my Vista laptop, remote to my WinXP image across the network.

This proved to be a much better solution than swapping hard drives around like I had been. The WinXP hard drive is a 5400 RPM drive. The new WinXP image runs on mirrored Western Digital Caviar 640GB 7200RPM drives. Not to mention the server is a quad core with 8GB of RAM. This is my WebSphere Portal development environment. It is MUCH faster in a VM than on my old disk.

Now, I'm shopping around for a gigabit ethernet switch and some addtional WD drives to spread out the IO. Even though I was pleased with the new console, I would venture that it will be significantly faster on Gb Ethernet.

If you are currently using VMWare server (the free edition) 1.06, you should seriously consider upgrading to 2.0. It has made my development efforts MUCH easier. Thanks VMWare!

WebSphere App Server 7 and openDNS Don't Mix

I just figured out a problem that has been bugging the bejeezus out of me. I could not for the life of me start of WAS7 in my RAD 7.5 dev environment. The startServer.log file always showed a port conflict, but I could not find the cause of it anywhere. I had shut down all my IM clients, Google desktop, hell, I even stopped iTunes, and a bunch of other miscellaneous processes.

Well, tonight, I decided to open a can of whoop ass on this problem and defeat it once and for all. I ran netstat several times but it never showed me the problem port (in this case it was port 8882). Then I got lucky and started WAS and immediately ran netstat. It showed a connection to IP 208.69.32.132 on port 8882. Once the server finally bombed, netstat no longer showed this connection. Well, this IP is a resolver of openDNS. It looked like the WAS server was trying to resolve its own hostname, but having to connect to openDNS somehow to do so. I'm still not totally clear on the problem. It never crops up on my WAS 6 or 6.1 instances - only WAS 7.

Once I knew the problem, the solution was to turn my wireless card off (I'm on a Thinkpad T61), while the server started up. Sure enough, it fully started. Once I see the line "server1 open for e-business", I can confidently switch on wireless and proceed as normal.

Hope this helps someone else.

Penguins, Tigers, and Leopards, oh my!

I've taken notice of the number of Macs at this year's LotusSphere conference. Lots of IBM'ers now have them as well as customers and partners. Several presenters were switching between their Mac desktop and their Windoze virtual machines. Another nicety is the strong presence of Canonical and Ubuntu here. There is such an irony in that the company that created the PC, no longer manufactures it, but embraces most of the major platforms (Solaris desktop being an exception). The support of Lotus Notes on Ubuntu is not as popular as the support of Notes on the Mac, but it is well received nonetheless. Lenovo's Thinkpad is still King here, but its marketshare is certainly less than it has been.

LotusSphere Opening General Session ...Taking Notes

I'm blogging from LotusSphere today in the Opening Session. Here are some of the key highlights.

• Lotus Notes celebrates 20 years this week.
  
• IBM announced that Bluehouse is now LotusLive, a SaaS solution for Lotus Notes and Domino.
• RIM announced new Blackberry Application. The new app for Lotus Connections features access to all of Connections' features. Domino Designer functionality in xPages for Blackberry. The Curve 8900 is soon to be released (only on TMobile however). Lotus Symphony will be supported on the Crackberry (uber cool!)
  
• Notes 8.5 client now fully available for the Mac and for Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Suse) - not news, but still important. Anyone care to guess what platform Outlook runs on??
  
• The IBM/SAP alliance project Atlantic is now a full featured product now known as "Alloy", with plans to ship in March.
  
• IBM is working with LinkedIn to provide a custom plugin to interact with that external community from within the Notes client.
• iCal support in the Notes client - bring in your Gmail calendar or create a iCal feed from custom applications.
• iNotes has a WICKED new look.
• In the Domino Designer, xPages are a pure Eclipse based development. Developing Ajax based applications can be deployed to the Blackberry using xPages.
• IBM SmartMarket is a new IBM offering for business partners - http://www.ibm.com/smartmarket
• IBM is sponsoring a new effort to OpenNTF.org, making templates, applications and code widely available under common Open Source licenses (GPL, lGPL, Apache, CDDL etc).
• IBM showed absolute positive reasons to update to Notes 8: >50% reduction in I/O, 30% reduction in servers, and 40% reduction in disk utilization. Bottom line: There is NO reason not to upgrade!
  
• Lotus Foundations. - an appliance based application for Notes/Domino where the OS is so small its burned onto a chip. This device looks like a small p505 desktop type app. It has autonomic functions to help restore/repair it in the event of crash or failure, and can be remotely managed by a business partner. This is designed for small and medium businesses. More on this in future blogs.
  
• Telephony integration for Unified Messaging
• Sametime can read your calendar and automatically change your online status accordingly.
• Start a conference call from within Lotus Sametime - while on the call, you click and drag new conferees into the call window from your Sametime list to automatically add them to the call. Then you can transfer your portion of the call from the VoIP/Sametime conference to your office phone, or your cell phone. Freaking cool. This is all available in Sametime 8.5.
  
• ...and the guys from the Blue Men Group just came out (not a feature, but entertaining nonetheless)
• A TON of new Sametime features.... too many to even type here. Holy crap that was cool.
• WOW, IBM has a VP of Social Software. Tells you where they put it as far as importance to the market place.

Lotus Connections 2.5

• Twitterlike micro-blog features
• New services - shared across connections/Quickr - new Wiki , now Social content sharing services. Securely share any content with your employees quickly.
  
• Widgets for easily connecting other social software services such as Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, BrightKite, and more.
• Mobile version of Connections for Blackberry, iPhone, and Nokia devices
  

LotusSphere 2009... Here I Come

Tomorrow begins the first day of IBM's LotusSphere at Disney's Swan and Dolphin resort in Orlando. Looks like I'll be driving it each day. Its about 55 miles one way. I'm not looking forward to the drive, but its good to know that with gas prices coming down it won't be that expensive. There's just too much going on in the personal life to leave the family each night, with my 4 month old being chief culprit.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing current and former colleagues and customers there. There will also be quite a bit of new topics to be covered. IBM has finalized Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 and announced it at MacWorld recently. That features some wildly new features in the Domino Designer. Some of which I was not too crazy about in the early betas. We'll see how far they have progressed this week.

Anyone else who is going, please be sure to look me up. I'll have my Crackberry with me, so you can email or call. Even comments to this post will arrive neatly in my Gmail for blackberry app.

Party on!

IBM Announces Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 is now available!

Yep, you heard it right... here's the scoop.

Introducing IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5

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