Coexistence Manager for Notes 3.8.4 - FBC Scenarios Guide

1-2: Make a configuration map

Scan through the installation and configuration procedures in this chapter, and think through what this process will entail in your own environment, to accommodate your own needs and preferences. Identify any special circumstances or issues, and decide how these will be addressed.

Then sketch out a configuration map to show which FBC components will reside on which computers. For technical reasons, the QCalCon component of the Free/Busy Connector must be installed on a Domino server. But if the Domino environment contains more than one Domino server, QCalCon is installed on only one server. (Other Domino servers can find and use a single QCalCon instance on a "bridgehead" server.) The other four Free/Busy Connector components can be installed on a single computer, although deployment to two separate computers will improve performance in environments with higher volumes of F/B queries and replies.

When Free/Busy Connector components are deployed to two computers, they are typically installed like this:

1-3: Complete the CMN FBC Planning Worksheet

Use the worksheet in Appendix A of this Scenarios Guide to gather and organize the information you will need to enter into CMN’s Management Console application when configuring the Free/Busy Connector. You can just print the Appendix to paper, and use a pen or pencil to write the information into the wide right margins.

Step 2: Configure the Notes/Domino side

A particular configuration of the Notes/Domino environment works best in most environments for compatibility with CMN's Free/Busy Connector. This section explains how to achieve the recommended configuration.

To configure the Notes/Domino side:

CMN supports Domino server clusters (ClusterNode1 and ClusterNode2) that provide Lotus Notes mail service in an active/standby redundancy configuration. In this case, a single CMN Web Server is required to support both Domino Servers.

Some Domino configuration steps are required for this scenario, but they occur only after the CMN FBC Web Server is configured (in Step 4 below). Complete the steps here to configure the rest of the Notes/Domino side, and then you will configure support for Domino clusters later in Step 4.

2-1: Physically install the CMN QCalCon task

CMN’s QCalCon is a Domino server task that facilitates communications between the Domino and Exchange servers, for transmitting Domino F/B queries to Exchange, and receiving F/B information from Exchange.

Run the CMN Autorun installer to install QCalCon to the Domino server. AutoRun offers the choice of a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of QCalCon. Choose the edition that matches the local Domino software edition (32- vs. 64-bit). (The host computer’s operating system is irrelevant to this choice.)

The AutoRun installer automatically checks the environment to verify CMN prerequisites, but you can bypass the prerequisites check by running the installer from the command line and appending ignoreprerequisites=1 to the command before executing.

In a Domino environment containing more than one Domino server, QCalCon is typically installed on only one “bridgehead” server. A Domino admin then configures the non-QCalCon servers to route their local users’ F/B queries to the QCalCon bridgehead server.

NOTE: Some admins with multiple Domino 6.5.x servers (only) report that non-bridgehead Domino 6.5.x servers are unable to route F/B queries to a QCalCon bridgehead server. IBM (in this article) says only: "Domino [6.5.x or earlier] does not support this type of configuration for free time lookup." Despite the IBM disclaimer, CMN's Free/Busy Connector does work in many such environments if its QCalCon server task is installed on all Domino 6.5.x servers.