Specifications

Lotus Redbooks Wiki – IBM Lotus Notes and Domino V8.5 Deployment Guide

With that said, if you decide that you would like to upgrade to ODS51 immediately or shortly after you

upgrade to Domino 8.5, you can add the Create_R85_Databases=1 notes.ini parameter to a Lotus Domino

8.0 (or 7.0) server in preparation for the Domino 8.5 upgrade.

The following two steps are required to enabled the new On Disk Structure:

• Add the Create_R8_Databases=1 parameter to the server notes.ini files (if not already done

before)

• Run a compact -c, or other copy-style compact, against your databases.

Note: you may want to enable some of the new ODS features at the same time. Please review the DAOS

pages.

Tip: For most efficient ODS conversion, please review the chapter Efficiently Upgrading the On-Disk-

Structure (ODS) section of Domino Server Deployment Best Practices

Upgrade the Notes Clients

Now its time to plan upgrading your clients - this is described in more detail in Lotus Notes Clients.

Mail file and Application Design

Historically, upgrading a Notes/Domino environment has had minimal impacts on existing Notes

applications. While trying to provide improvements based on widely adopted open standards, keeping

backward compatibility has always been very important. But just like for the messaging, applications need to

be properly planned as well during an upgrade.

First, we can start thinking about applications from the outset. There's a lot of work that can be done prior to

the actual upgrade. You will need all the details of your existing applications when discussing requirements

and architecture.

You can start by doing an inventory of your applications. Leverage this opportunity to clean up your

environment of unused applications. During this process, gather the following information:

• Application owner(s)

• User population using this application (executives, managers, departments or the entire

organization)

• Type and level of complexity of the application (template-based, custom, back-end connectivity and

integration)

• Importance of applications (mission-critical, company-wide, departmental, financial, data repository,

etc)

• Existing Issues – This will avoid any blame on the upgrade if it was already broken

Then, you will need to determine what you will do with them. Some applications might be simple enough to

upgrade their design directly, while others might require more testing and fixing their existing issues before

the upgrade.

It is strongly recommended to plan your upgrade in small steps:

• Give a higher priority to the applications that must be fixed before the upgrade and assess the

resources and efforts necessary for this task.

• Focus your efforts on the issues that are easy to fix, while avoiding the introduction of new features