Has anybody noticed that 6.5.x Enterprise installs the first server as partitioned?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Hi,

I have been upgrading servers from 5.0.12 to 6.5.2. After receiving an odd error from intelliwatch I started looking at the configuration of the newly installed server in detail.

It was then that I noticed that the 6.5.2 server code install changed the notes.ini to contain a Partitionnumber=1 variable.

Looking further I noticed that it updated the registry Partitions entry with “1,” and created a 1 key instead of a 6.5 key below the Domino key.

Although this server has been installed as Enterprise, neither paritioning or clustering has been selected.

On checking cleanly installed 6.5.1 servers, which again have not been installed as partitioned, I find the same installation technique.

This is pretty bizarre. I do not want partitioning and I don’t think it is healthy to install single instance partitioned servers when there is no intention to partition further in the future. A long history with this tells me that it can cause unpredictable results when reinstalling. Especially if something has been corrupted.

Is this a new “feature” that we have not yet been informed of? Or is it just an unreported bug? I would be interested to know the answer if anybody else knows? I haven’t tried installing non enterprise versions yet as I have just seen the issue.

Neil.

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Subject: Has anybody noticed that 6.5.x Enterprise installs the first server as partitioned?

It’s by design and it works that way for all license types, not just Enterprise. It’s not truely a partitioned install, since the notes.ini file is still created in the program files directory and not the data directory.

What exactly do you think is the difference between a single Domino server install and a partitioned Domino server with only one partition?

I can’t answer your claim of “A long history with this tells me that it can cause unpredictable results when reinstalling. Especially if something has been corrupted.” This is the way the install has been done since 6.0.

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Subject: RE: Has anybody noticed that 6.5.x Enterprise installs the first server as partitioned?

Thanks for the update.

If you look in the posts you will see at least one person who has had a problem with reinstalling the “Partitioned” server where the installation program thought that it was installing into an already partitioned system (actually correct, but handled incorrectly), and would only offer an additional partition.

The difference as I see it is as follows:

In the registry of a Domino server on Windows server platforms there is a version number under the Domino key. Now in 6.x there is simply a number #.

However the 5.0 key has not been removed which can lead to confusion with add ons etc… Also the Registry now reports that the server “is” partitioned as the partition key is populated. Any software written to interact with Domino will then go into partitioned mode. What this does for partition sensitive software installed on Domino5 and then upgraded to D6 I cannot say, but I have already seen the configuration variables for one such program reporting it is in single instance mode. I wonder what it would report if it where reinstalled.

If you look further into the posts you will see an entry which claims that the server installed actually worked better when a second partition was installed rather than just the one (which claimed it was partition 1 of 1)

I can understand that this option would be invaluable in environments where server consolidation and upgrade to enterprise platforms is being carried out. However in an environment where only one single server instance will be installed per hardware platform, I see it as an unnecessary complication of the environment.

This becomes even more so where there are a combination of partitioned and non partitioned servers. This introduces complication where it need not be.

Having worked through a world where I initially had to install servers in order across HA platforms, then advanced to programmatically deploying the code and modifying the configuration files with the correct partition numbers, I have seen more partitions than I would like to remember and life is never as easy as you would think :frowning: So why make it any more difficult.

If it was decided that we needed the ability to migrate from non partitioned to partitioned servers on 6.x in one step, why not give us a switch. That would have left the poor sorry creatures who slavishly worship the platform with a little more control in an otherwise fairly anarchic world :slight_smile:

And just as a final point, I understood partitioning to be an enterprise featuer. I find myself wondering how this affectst the pricing models for additional products?