We dig deep into the latest builds of Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange, two enterprise class mail servers, and here we have discussed about some of the key concern areas that will help you in planning & deploying them
Whenever an enterprise needs to deploy a mail server, planning, preparation and requirement analysis are the top priorities on their mind. An enterprise needs to decide upon a system that blends well with their strategic business challenges. For instance, the technology director needs to deliver secure and compliant communications tools to support a highly distributed workspace. Reducing hardware costs and operational overheads are the priority points for the IT managers. Globally distributed customers and partners, communication overload, increasing security and the high cost of communications are just some of the connectivity challenges that the enterprise might face. Thus, protection and compliance, ability to access anywhere, flexibility and reliability are some of the features integral to a messaging solution which may lead to its adoption in that enterprise. A messaging server should be optimized for software and services.
Microsoft’s exchange server really came of age with the release of version 2007. Exchange 2007 offers a solid and complete messaging platform. The beta release of Exchange 2010 serves up even more features and functionality and looks like it may be the most robust Exchange offering yet.
Exchange has long enjoyed the lion's share of the business messaging platform market. Does this mean that it is the best e-mail platform offering out there? Some would argue that isn't the case.
IBM's Domino platform with Lotus Notes still has a strong following. Die-hard Lotus Notes fans cite stability and security as the primary benefits for eschewing Exchange for Notes. The CRN Test Center took a side-by-side view at the two latest releases of each platform: Exchange 2010 and Lotus Domino 8.5, and their respective clients—Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes client 8.
Bases for choosing mail servers
Deployment strategies: Planning an Exchange Server or Lotus Domino or any other mailing solution, the deployment part must be carefully analyzed. An enterprise often has to deal with budgets and other challenges before they are ready to deploy it fully. As it is more targeted to larger organizations, it therefore stresses on a distributed deployment plan with lots of individual servers. Depending upon the enterprises one can either opt for the Standard Edition or the Enterprise Edition of Exchange Server. However, larger distributions deployments might be bit expensive considering both hardware and software standpoints but these may be negligible or accepted when compared with the service they provide.
Evaluate your existing environments: An enterprise decision maker must take out time to do a thorough evaluation and capture the baseline of the existing server infrastructure. This will help them to better understand and compare how the upgraded environment would be beneficial to him, if at all. Documenting the pre-existing conditions and problems and all the mandatory resources available would do the enterprise a world of good in making the leap to a newer and better environment.
Prediction: The enterprise needs to get a clear idea of what the probable economic or managerial problems they could face and be prepared to tackle the predictable problems beforehand.
Interoperability and customization: Exchange Server being a single unified communication system was designed to be run as a part of the Windows eco-system & requires a 64-bit architecture. It is pretty much a straight out of the box software product.
Lotus Notes, as the part of Domino platform, is highly customizable and if the developers need to integrate some custom components, there are some modules available. They also provide support for the integration of �mashups� which are the Web Apps that help you in integrating the data from multiple sources into one single interface.
Deploying the mail servers: Installation of both the servers was pretty much smooth as the architecture on which we deployed give us an extraedge. The deployment was on the Dell's 'Power Edge M710' blade server with 144 GB of RAM with Intel's Xeon processor 5500 series. We installed the trial versions of both the mail servers on the Windows Server 2008 R2, Enterprise Edition. There wasn't much issues with the Lotus Domino installation but there were some concerns regarding Exchange Server. For Exchange server, most of the problems came with the Hub Transport Role and Mailbox Server Role.
Comparing the installation part for both the mail servers, once the ADS, roles, features and other necessary services are configured, then everything goes very well with the flow. For, both the mailing servers only the problem arises when you don't have a dedicated domain name. So, the best solution we could find was to deploy it locally with some basic configurations.
Installation and deployment
E-mail servers almost always require some sort of preplanning before actual installation and deployment. Launching the setup.exe file of Exchange 2010 brings up a splash screen with links to useful information.
There are several components that must be installed before embarking on an installation of Microsoft Exchange 2010. The setup.exe splash screen lists and links to each component; all are available as free downloads from Microsoft's Web site. Pre-requisites for installing Exchange 2010 are the .Net 3.5 Framework, Windows Remote Management 2.0 and Power Shell v2. IIS components.
Of course, having to download each component and then reboot the server after each is installed adds to the length of time it takes to get Exchange installed. Once that is done, Exchange can be installed with typical settings or with customized settings. Custom settings refer to the installation of Unified Messaging, an Edge Transport server role or the Exchange Management Console.
Another time-consuming yet necessary part of the Exchange installation are the Readiness Checks. The system will check for additional pre-requisites needed to install Exchange. Any Active Directory or DNS issues could really set back the installation time during the Readiness Check phase. However, the time it takes to do the check is worth it. This is a big improvement over legacy versions of Exchange.
Installation of Lotus Domino Messaging Server moved like lightning in comparison. To install the core Domino and Lotus Notes platform took about two minutes, although the process was not completely glitch-free.
After installing Domino, attempting to launch Domino as a Windows Service gave a "Notes.ini file for this server is invalid error" message. There seemed to be an issue with the installer. It appeared to be configured to write files to a directory path that did not exist on our Windows 2008 Server. Modifying the .ini file to the path containing the appropriate files corrected the error.
Domino installed with the following features by default: templates, certificate management, Web services data files, Dojo, XPages, Lotus iNotes, Sametime integration, performance monitoring, plus a host of other features. You get a lot of extra goodies with a Domino install.
After installation, the server had a database replicator, an agent manager and other tasks that can be added to customize the environment. Each task is listed in the interface with a description that explains what that task is.
For deployment, we tested connecting each e-mail client to each e-mail server. Outlook is a snap to configure. Once a user has a mailbox set up, the client also needs to point to the server. The Lotus Client configuration is a bit more involved; not only does the server name have to be specified, a mail file and User ID file must exist for the user.
For Installation, points go to Lotus. The process is smooth because the installer contains all of the necessary files to get Domino up and running in a relatively short amount of time.
Interoperability and customization
Lotus Notes as part of the Domino platform supports a multitude of operating systems. A 32-bit or 64-bit version of Domino can be installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Linux, Sun Solaris or IBM AIX.
In contrast, not surprisingly, Exchange Server 2010 is a single unified communications system designed to be run as part of the Windows ecosystem. Exchange 2010 also requires 64-bit architecture.
Although there are a vast amount of granular controls and varied configuration options, Exchange is pretty much a straight-out-of-the-box software product, and there isn't exactly a lot of room for integrating custom components.
Lotus Notes, on the Domino platform, is highly customizable and there are modules for developers to integrate custom components. Lotus Notes supports the integration of mash-ups—Web applications that integrate data from multiple sources into one single interface. Composite applications are another way to customize the Notes environment and are weightier than mash-ups.
IBM also offers a Lotus Expeditor Toolkit. It is used to create custom plug-ins for not only Lotus Notes but for Lotus Sametime, the unified communications platform from Lotus and for its application suite, Lotus Symphony.
In terms of interoperability and customization, Lotus is the clear winner over Exchange. However, all of that customization horsepower can lead to a level of complexity for Notes administrators. An added plus for Lotus Notes is the ability to install on multiple platforms and OSes.
Feature set
A big advantage Microsoft has over IBM with unified messaging is that all modules necessary to create a true unified messaging solution are incorporated into Exchange 2010. To get that same level of functionality with IBM's solution requires the installation of multiple IBM products.
Exchange is so feature-rich that a lot of customization is not necessary for most organizations. For example, incorporating mobile messaging into Exchange only requires enabling ActiveSync. ActiveSync is also supported almost across the board by the major mobile platform vendors.
Exchange 2010 also comes with a lot of enhancements to legacy Exchange. One of the major new features is the ability to integrate voicemail into Outlook Web Access. In fact, voicemail preview is a new feature that provides a text-based preview of voicemail messages.
Yet another new feature is Exchange federation. This allows for the cross-premises sharing of resources, including federated message delivery and calendar sharing both within and outside an organization. Exchange 2010 also lets users share calendars with users outside the company. Access permissions and controls are available to keep such communication secure.
There is now also support for SATA. Exchange 2010 can utilize Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) desktop-class hard disk drives.
With Exchange 2010, e-mail administrators can opt to give end users quite a bit of control over that user's own messaging environment. The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) is a Web-based interface that enables users to "self-help." Users can perform tasks as varied as running delivery reports to managing distribution groups.
There is even enhanced device security in Exchange 2010. Per-user mobile device policies can be set, such as allowing attachments to specifying PIN requirements. Administrators can also deem which mobile device can sync to Exchange and which to block.
Many Exchange users will welcome the introduction of Mail Tips. This feature walks a user through checking a message before sending to avoid potentially embarrassing sent messages. Unfortunately, Mail Tips is not supported in Outlook 2007—only in Outlook 2010 or the OWA that comes with Exchange 2010.
The Management Console has the same interface introduced in Exchange 2007. Almost all major tasks needed to get Exchange up and running are done through user-friendly wizards. Active Directory is also tightly intertwined in this version of Exchange; end-user mailboxes are created directly in the Exchange Management Console rather than having to go outside to the Active Directory Users and Computers module.
Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 also have feature enhancements. However, some of the features are ones that have long been in Exchange and Outlook. In the latest Lotus 8.5 client, a new feature being touted is auto-completion of an e-mail address while composing a message. Another feature, the ability to forward contacts as a vCard, is also one we have already seen in Exchange.
Still, some of the new features are quite innovative and really take advantage of the customizability for which Notes and Domino are known. One such feature is the ability to mash up your calendar; you can add activities, private or public Google calendars or other Notes calendars to yours.
Notes 8.5 also comes with built-in social networking capabilities, as Lotus Connections can be integrated into Lotus Notes. With it, users can create blogs, communities, bookmarks and more. On the security side, Notes share log-in now lets users start Lotus Notes and use their Notes IDs without having to provide Notes passwords.
Notes 8.5 has an interface to manage the Domino server. It's not Web-based—it's an actual client that gets installed onto a machine independent of the Domino server. Both this interface as well as the Notes client, although perfectly acceptable in how they run their features, have a dated, technologically primitive look to them.
For features, we are going to give Exchange the win. Exchange 2010's new features aid in bringing a user an entire new experience. In Lotus, not as much. Lotus client 8.5 resembles pretty much the Lotus clients of the past.
Performance
We were simply blown away with the performance of Exchange 2010. Microsoft has achieved about a 70 percent performance improvement over Exchange 2007. The client fires up quickly and mail routing, internally, is fast.
Lotus Notes, on comparable hardware, gave us slower performance. The client took almost 40 seconds to load as opposed to the 10 seconds it took to load Outlook. Internal mail routing speed was on par with Exchange. There was some latency also with the Domino Administrator console syncing up to the Domino server.
Whenever an enterprise needs to deploy a mail server, planning, preparation and requirement analysis are the top priorities on their mind. An enterprise needs to decide upon a system that blends well with their strategic business challenges. For instance, the technology director needs to deliver secure and compliant communications tools to support a highly distributed workspace. Reducing hardware costs and operational overheads are the priority points for the IT managers. Globally distributed customers and partners, communication overload, increasing security and the high cost of communications are just some of the connectivity challenges that the enterprise might face. Thus, protection and compliance, ability to access anywhere, flexibility and reliability are some of the features integral to a messaging solution which may lead to its adoption in that enterprise. A messaging server should be optimized for software and services.
Microsoft’s exchange server really came of age with the release of version 2007. Exchange 2007 offers a solid and complete messaging platform. The beta release of Exchange 2010 serves up even more features and functionality and looks like it may be the most robust Exchange offering yet.
Exchange has long enjoyed the lion's share of the business messaging platform market. Does this mean that it is the best e-mail platform offering out there? Some would argue that isn't the case.
IBM's Domino platform with Lotus Notes still has a strong following. Die-hard Lotus Notes fans cite stability and security as the primary benefits for eschewing Exchange for Notes. The CRN Test Center took a side-by-side view at the two latest releases of each platform: Exchange 2010 and Lotus Domino 8.5, and their respective clients—Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes client 8.
Deployment strategies: Planning an Exchange Server or Lotus Domino or any other mailing solution, the deployment part must be carefully analyzed. An enterprise often has to deal with budgets and other challenges before they are ready to deploy it fully. As it is more targeted to larger organizations, it therefore stresses on a distributed deployment plan with lots of individual servers. Depending upon the enterprises one can either opt for the Standard Edition or the Enterprise Edition of Exchange Server. However, larger distributions deployments might be bit expensive considering both hardware and software standpoints but these may be negligible or accepted when compared with the service they provide.
Evaluate your existing environments: An enterprise decision maker must take out time to do a thorough evaluation and capture the baseline of the existing server infrastructure. This will help them to better understand and compare how the upgraded environment would be beneficial to him, if at all. Documenting the pre-existing conditions and problems and all the mandatory resources available would do the enterprise a world of good in making the leap to a newer and better environment.
Prediction: The enterprise needs to get a clear idea of what the probable economic or managerial problems they could face and be prepared to tackle the predictable problems beforehand.
Interoperability and customization: Exchange Server being a single unified communication system was designed to be run as a part of the Windows eco-system & requires a 64-bit architecture. It is pretty much a straight out of the box software product.
Lotus Notes, as the part of Domino platform, is highly customizable and if the developers need to integrate some custom components, there are some modules available. They also provide support for the integration of �mashups� which are the Web Apps that help you in integrating the data from multiple sources into one single interface.
Deploying the mail servers: Installation of both the servers was pretty much smooth as the architecture on which we deployed give us an extraedge. The deployment was on the Dell's 'Power Edge M710' blade server with 144 GB of RAM with Intel's Xeon processor 5500 series. We installed the trial versions of both the mail servers on the Windows Server 2008 R2, Enterprise Edition. There wasn't much issues with the Lotus Domino installation but there were some concerns regarding Exchange Server. For Exchange server, most of the problems came with the Hub Transport Role and Mailbox Server Role.
| MS Exchange Server 2010 | Lotus Domino 8.5 |
| Features 1. Make your mailbox search more easy: As the name implies, it gives the designated person the capability to perform organization-level searches across the users mailbox.This is a pretty decent feature as it helps the enterprises to perform e-discovery. 2. Exchange Control Panel: Integrated into OWA, this is a pretty decent addition for the administrators as it allows them to perform some of the common management tasks remotely using a web interface. 3. Database Availability Group: Exchange has taken a step further as this feature allows you to host copies of individual databases by designating multiple servers. 4. Voice mail and more: It was there in previous version, wherein your voice messages can be saved as email attachments But now with the introduction of speech recognition engine it helps to automatically transcribe voice mail messages. | Features 1. XPages: This new tool introduced in Lotus Domino 8.5 wil help developers to create Domino web apps more quickly and efficiently. The apps that are built using the Xpages are supported for Web use only. 2. ID vault: as the name suggests, these vaults can store ID files on the server, and in case the client forgets the password it can pass them back the required information. Not only this it helps to secure and recover,reset passwords, recover lost ID's and a lot more. 3. DAOS: with this new feature Domino Attatchment and Object service, it helps in managing a shared repository that are present on the disk by referring the objects that are available on the disk. The other benefits includes throughput & reduced backup space. 4. Talking about Directory Independence; this feature was focused to store groups and person information in an LDAP directory. The goal of the DI is to ease off the burden for the administrators who have the responsibility of deploying and managing multiple directories. So it gives you the option, that instead of using Domino directory, you also get the option to use LDAP directory. |
Installation and deployment
E-mail servers almost always require some sort of preplanning before actual installation and deployment. Launching the setup.exe file of Exchange 2010 brings up a splash screen with links to useful information.
There are several components that must be installed before embarking on an installation of Microsoft Exchange 2010. The setup.exe splash screen lists and links to each component; all are available as free downloads from Microsoft's Web site. Pre-requisites for installing Exchange 2010 are the .Net 3.5 Framework, Windows Remote Management 2.0 and Power Shell v2. IIS components.
Of course, having to download each component and then reboot the server after each is installed adds to the length of time it takes to get Exchange installed. Once that is done, Exchange can be installed with typical settings or with customized settings. Custom settings refer to the installation of Unified Messaging, an Edge Transport server role or the Exchange Management Console.
Another time-consuming yet necessary part of the Exchange installation are the Readiness Checks. The system will check for additional pre-requisites needed to install Exchange. Any Active Directory or DNS issues could really set back the installation time during the Readiness Check phase. However, the time it takes to do the check is worth it. This is a big improvement over legacy versions of Exchange.
Installation of Lotus Domino Messaging Server moved like lightning in comparison. To install the core Domino and Lotus Notes platform took about two minutes, although the process was not completely glitch-free.
After installing Domino, attempting to launch Domino as a Windows Service gave a "Notes.ini file for this server is invalid error" message. There seemed to be an issue with the installer. It appeared to be configured to write files to a directory path that did not exist on our Windows 2008 Server. Modifying the .ini file to the path containing the appropriate files corrected the error.
Domino installed with the following features by default: templates, certificate management, Web services data files, Dojo, XPages, Lotus iNotes, Sametime integration, performance monitoring, plus a host of other features. You get a lot of extra goodies with a Domino install.
After installation, the server had a database replicator, an agent manager and other tasks that can be added to customize the environment. Each task is listed in the interface with a description that explains what that task is.
For deployment, we tested connecting each e-mail client to each e-mail server. Outlook is a snap to configure. Once a user has a mailbox set up, the client also needs to point to the server. The Lotus Client configuration is a bit more involved; not only does the server name have to be specified, a mail file and User ID file must exist for the user.
For Installation, points go to Lotus. The process is smooth because the installer contains all of the necessary files to get Domino up and running in a relatively short amount of time.
Interoperability and customization
Lotus Notes as part of the Domino platform supports a multitude of operating systems. A 32-bit or 64-bit version of Domino can be installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Linux, Sun Solaris or IBM AIX.
In contrast, not surprisingly, Exchange Server 2010 is a single unified communications system designed to be run as part of the Windows ecosystem. Exchange 2010 also requires 64-bit architecture.
Although there are a vast amount of granular controls and varied configuration options, Exchange is pretty much a straight-out-of-the-box software product, and there isn't exactly a lot of room for integrating custom components.
Lotus Notes, on the Domino platform, is highly customizable and there are modules for developers to integrate custom components. Lotus Notes supports the integration of mash-ups—Web applications that integrate data from multiple sources into one single interface. Composite applications are another way to customize the Notes environment and are weightier than mash-ups.
IBM also offers a Lotus Expeditor Toolkit. It is used to create custom plug-ins for not only Lotus Notes but for Lotus Sametime, the unified communications platform from Lotus and for its application suite, Lotus Symphony.
In terms of interoperability and customization, Lotus is the clear winner over Exchange. However, all of that customization horsepower can lead to a level of complexity for Notes administrators. An added plus for Lotus Notes is the ability to install on multiple platforms and OSes.
Feature set
A big advantage Microsoft has over IBM with unified messaging is that all modules necessary to create a true unified messaging solution are incorporated into Exchange 2010. To get that same level of functionality with IBM's solution requires the installation of multiple IBM products.
Exchange is so feature-rich that a lot of customization is not necessary for most organizations. For example, incorporating mobile messaging into Exchange only requires enabling ActiveSync. ActiveSync is also supported almost across the board by the major mobile platform vendors.
Exchange 2010 also comes with a lot of enhancements to legacy Exchange. One of the major new features is the ability to integrate voicemail into Outlook Web Access. In fact, voicemail preview is a new feature that provides a text-based preview of voicemail messages.
Yet another new feature is Exchange federation. This allows for the cross-premises sharing of resources, including federated message delivery and calendar sharing both within and outside an organization. Exchange 2010 also lets users share calendars with users outside the company. Access permissions and controls are available to keep such communication secure.
There is now also support for SATA. Exchange 2010 can utilize Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) desktop-class hard disk drives.
With Exchange 2010, e-mail administrators can opt to give end users quite a bit of control over that user's own messaging environment. The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) is a Web-based interface that enables users to "self-help." Users can perform tasks as varied as running delivery reports to managing distribution groups.
There is even enhanced device security in Exchange 2010. Per-user mobile device policies can be set, such as allowing attachments to specifying PIN requirements. Administrators can also deem which mobile device can sync to Exchange and which to block.
Many Exchange users will welcome the introduction of Mail Tips. This feature walks a user through checking a message before sending to avoid potentially embarrassing sent messages. Unfortunately, Mail Tips is not supported in Outlook 2007—only in Outlook 2010 or the OWA that comes with Exchange 2010.
The Management Console has the same interface introduced in Exchange 2007. Almost all major tasks needed to get Exchange up and running are done through user-friendly wizards. Active Directory is also tightly intertwined in this version of Exchange; end-user mailboxes are created directly in the Exchange Management Console rather than having to go outside to the Active Directory Users and Computers module.
Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 also have feature enhancements. However, some of the features are ones that have long been in Exchange and Outlook. In the latest Lotus 8.5 client, a new feature being touted is auto-completion of an e-mail address while composing a message. Another feature, the ability to forward contacts as a vCard, is also one we have already seen in Exchange.
Still, some of the new features are quite innovative and really take advantage of the customizability for which Notes and Domino are known. One such feature is the ability to mash up your calendar; you can add activities, private or public Google calendars or other Notes calendars to yours.
Notes 8.5 also comes with built-in social networking capabilities, as Lotus Connections can be integrated into Lotus Notes. With it, users can create blogs, communities, bookmarks and more. On the security side, Notes share log-in now lets users start Lotus Notes and use their Notes IDs without having to provide Notes passwords.
Notes 8.5 has an interface to manage the Domino server. It's not Web-based—it's an actual client that gets installed onto a machine independent of the Domino server. Both this interface as well as the Notes client, although perfectly acceptable in how they run their features, have a dated, technologically primitive look to them.
For features, we are going to give Exchange the win. Exchange 2010's new features aid in bringing a user an entire new experience. In Lotus, not as much. Lotus client 8.5 resembles pretty much the Lotus clients of the past.
Performance
We were simply blown away with the performance of Exchange 2010. Microsoft has achieved about a 70 percent performance improvement over Exchange 2007. The client fires up quickly and mail routing, internally, is fast.
Lotus Notes, on comparable hardware, gave us slower performance. The client took almost 40 seconds to load as opposed to the 10 seconds it took to load Outlook. Internal mail routing speed was on par with Exchange. There was some latency also with the Domino Administrator console syncing up to the Domino server.
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