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Notes admins - are you willing to be shown up?

Wed 15 Dec 2010, 10:55 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
I have called for book proposals, and the Notes developers have shown up, but there is a noticeable lack of admin book proposals.  I would think you folks would be chomping at the bit to offer Locking Down Your Connections Server, or Configuring Quickr Quicker, or Living with LotusLive, or whatever it is that makes you admins tick.  The only admin-oriented proposals I have seen are (I am adding these as people propose them, thus the one by Keith Brooks is the newest):




Maybe you just can't compete with developers in creativity and passion?

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What has been said:


937.1. Philip Storry
(15/12/2010 16:46)

Admins are just quieter.

And in many cases, Admins are also more restricted (they cannot simply upgrade a server without going through change control and a lot of planning).

We're also often hamstrung by Architecture teams or other "higher authorities" within an organisation.

This leads to a slower, more gradual pace of change. I have a theory which states that developers appear more vocal because they often live closer to the bleeding edge, and they need to ask for help or feel compelled to share hard won experience. Administrators are rarely at that bleeding edge, so are far less visible.

Look at the more vocal admins in the Domino Blogging Ecosphere, and many of them are in consultancies or small companies. Domino Administrator bloggers in big companies? Not so many.

I know I've posted much less since moving from a ~1500 person organisation to a ~60,000 person corporation.


937.2. Keith Brooks
(12/15/2010 05:01 PM)

I hadn't thought about it really.

Philip, not sure I agree with you entirely but yes there are fewer admin bloggers at large companies but the ones that do are very good and helpful.

But those of us BPs see much more variety too in one day than many of those in larger companies so we have more to discuss.


937.3. Ben Langhinrichs
(12/15/2010 05:19 PM)

I'm just razzing both sides in a blatant attempt to jack up the number of proposals. I want to get people thinking about what could be out there, as we may have all grown too accustomed to the absence of Notes/Domino books. There is nothing like the status quo to convince people that things are the way they are meant to be, not just the way they happen to be.


937.4. Len Berg
(12/15/2010 09:14 PM)

Book Proposal:Getting started with Domino Administration.

A succinct group of illustrated chapters covering

basic administration for new Domino admins.

How Domino works:

Overview of each process

Intraserver communication

Communication on different protocols

Configuring and Tuning the Domino Server

Growing The Infrastructure

Clustering and Partitioning

Virtualizing Servers

Incorporating other Technologies

Traveler, BES, Sametime

Troubleshooting

What to do when things are slow

What to do when processes are down

How to collect debug information