I have a scenario where I need to be able to connect to the Notes Server from a different location. However, this other location can ping the IP address of the Notes Server. We have the DNS entries as well. I have a clustered environment. (Notes Cluster)
in the location document. If I put the name of the mail server as mymailservername ie (Apollo01) it works fine in my home network. But it cannot resolve it on the other network.
I can replace the name with an actual IP Address. This solves the issue, but then the failover does not occur.
I am trying to find out how The Notes Client resolves the path to the server.
Subject: How does the Client resolve the server address?
Domain 1 may have an ip address of 400.300.200.1 (ex.) and that is assigned to a server called Apollo01. Domino goes by server name apollo01. The second domain doesn’t know what that means, so a DNS translation has to be setup to resolve the name of the server to an assigned ip address for that ip scheme. Hope this helps. Sounds like the network guy needs to get involved.
Subject: It looks into his connection documents and than does a lookup via DNS/host
Not exactly sure this is what happens just some ideas…
You should do a trace on Domino level and than also check on OS level via ping. I read from your post between the lines that your IP might differ in different locations (internet extranet address?). You might want to check if the IP correctly resolves in different areas.
If you are using different IPs for the same box this could be also a caching issue. Notes tries to cache the address and even a restart does not delete those remembered addresses in all cases. They are stored in the location document. If this the case having different locations would solve this issue. If you are not sure you have a proper DNS in all location or not all IPs of the server are listed in DNS you could have different connection docs per location…
Subject: RE: It looks into his connection documents and than does a lookup via DNS/host
Thanks guys for all your input.
I am thinking that it does the lookup via DNS. If this is the case, it just might work. I have two servers… one called TORNOTES01 the other called TORNOTES02. They are clustered.
We have a means of accessing our system from other networks. Such as when our employees travel abroad to our other locations world wide.
I have had no problem with those mobile users using the IP address of the first machine. However, in order for the fail over to occur, the IP Address must be replaced with the name of the server. I have tested this to be true.
so, as long as it can translate TORNOTES01 from the DNS, it should also be able to failover as it will be able to translate TORNOTES02 as well. I just need to test this.
All pertinent information has been entered into all DNS servers that will come into play here.
Subject: you really need to take care about the cache if you have multiple IPs
For clustering the names of the servers need to be resolvable. That’s it. Failover occurs within Notes and uses the local cluster.ncf which contains all cluster mates. If you run into trouble with failover in this scenario this is probably because address caching specially if users use the same location in different environments where they access the server with different IPs check TN # 1094111 (–>) for details where the cache is stored in the location doc.
Try under File - User Preferences - Ports, and use Trace.
From the help file…
You can control the level of information displayed in the Trace Information box. To view the new options:
From the menu, choose File - Preferences - User Preferences.
Macintosh OS X users: Notes - Preferences - User Preferences.
Click the Ports button.
Click the Trace button.
From the “Trace options” drop-down menu, select one of the following:
“Full trace information” to display the full trace information, including searches through Connection documents.
“Include drive messages” to display all the information from network drivers.
(Optional) From the “Notes Log options” drop-down menu, select the level of information for Notes to copy into the Notes Log database (log.nsf) while tracing the connection.
Do one of the following:
Click Trace to start the trace.
Click Done to close the dialog box without tracing the connection.