The forum and blogosphere seems strangely calm about the pending change to daylight savings time in the US and Canada. Granted I know there have been technotes out on this for a few months but this seems to me to be a colossal issue and the technotes, while they are fairly comprehensive in describing the problem don’t make me feel much better about the solutions.
Has anyone here fully remedied the issue in an enterprise and what was your experience?
Has anybody who has deployed the OS and Java patches (Windows XP/Server 2003) run across anything unexpected at all? I need to base the roll-out plan on a risk assessment and all of the risks I’ve seen seem to relate mostly to C&S or date/time issues. Do the patches/updates result in any other unexpected defects?
If they only hit the things they’re supposed to address, we can go with a low risk level and plan accordingly. If, on the other hand, the patches do something weird like screw up logins or Excel or cause server reboots or… then we’ll need to do a bigger plan, more testing, and probably ongoing monitoring.
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
Our company is already starting to feel the effects so to speak. I with the OS patch out and installed already on some PC’s, but the notes settings have not been completed. Having some calendar issues.
But we are in the process of getting it all worked out, well probably be done before it hits.
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
Maybe I’m being too blase about it, but if you’re running ND7 and have your OS patched to latest/greatest fixpacks (windows), my understanding is, there’s nothing TO freak out about, it’s all been taken care of.
And in any case…it’s not like Y2K. The worst thing that would happen is your cross-time-zone calendar appointments would be really screwed up for 3 weeks.
Subject: RE: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
Maybe you’re users are more accepting than mine but like Robert I’m a “little” concern.
I know many of my users have already created meetings all through the year for people around the world. So I’m not looking forward to the 4 weeks (3 and 1) when meetings that have been booked now are on people’s (Room and Resources) calendars at the wrong time.
Then new people going in and booking the meeting after the time change being told someone is available and “double bookings” and overlaps occur.
Subject: I guess it depends on whether your company lives & dies by C&S
I have a client where the C&S system is about the most critical thing in the environment. Especially for executives.
So here is the best case scenario. On December 12th when it shipped you applied the MS Windows patches to all of your workstations and servers as well as the appropriate APAR’s to your servers. As soon as you did that all meetings previously scheduled for the three weeks in question now appear one hour later than they should except on your Blackberries which aren’t patched because the patch isn’t available. Now you start creating more meetings for that time period which are stored and appear correctly except on Blackberries where they will appear an hour earlier than they should.
This is the BEST scenario. It falls apart very quickly if you take a while to get the Windows patches out or if you can’t patch EVERYONE fairly close to each other from a time perspective.
Oh by the way if users are using DWA from home their machines probably aren’t patched so they will potentially be scheduling bad entries right up to the deadline.
BTW, the worst thing that will happen is that ALL your meetings occurring in the US and Canada will be screwed up for three weeks.
Subject: RE: I guess it depends on whether your company lives & dies by C&S
Okay so I was being too blase! I guess I misread something awhile back and thought that as long as the OS was fixed, there was no issue on the Domino side. Now I’ve seen the dreadful technotes and I understand.
Subject: RE: I guess it depends on whether your company lives & dies by C&S
To be blunt, your users need to understand the impact of this Daylight Savings Change.
The earlier this is communicated to users the more you can nip this problem in the bud.
You guys are lucky! In Australia in recent years we’ve had major changes to the timing of Daylight Savings Time announced with as little as 2 weeks notice (and you can imagine that we’re not as important to Microsoft as the USA and Canada is).
OS Patching is about all you can do (apart from communicating the issue to users). Aside from the problem of rooms being double-booked you might also get irate people complaing about missing meetings altogether because they got the wrong time. Let them know about the problem NOW so that they can fix the problem themselves once the OS patching has been done.
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
This has been one of the better threads on the subject. You are all thinking and it seems that some are actually testing and responding (rather than FREAKING OUT). I have been having a horrible time with this at my current client. I have checked with some of our other clients and it seems that no one is too interested in the changes to DST right now. In fact I had one client say to me last week he will look at it March 1st.
I have spent the most part of today on support calls with IBM/Lotus and working on our open PMR’s. There are some issues that people need to be aware of. I posted these here:
I have been scanning this forum all day trying to post and respond to as many of these as possible. DST seems to be my life lately… We have tried to test as many scenarios as possible and some that even Lotus has admitted to not have tried.
Unfortunately there does not seem to be anywhere to get all the information. At the present time there is no documentation on the agent manager scheduler problem that I documented above. Lotus has been able to recreate the problem and it has been reported… That is the last I have heard.
Does anyone else have any feedback from their own testing?
Subject: RE: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
Hi Robert,
You’re right. Many clients are not aware of the potential problems. At least, if clients don’t use the tools provided by IBM, they should at least have an action plans.
We produced a document describing the situation for our customers. This document provides links towards the various suppliers(IBM, Microsoft, SUN, Linux, JAVA). We remain available if they need us.
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
I think you are right Rob…Everyone who works on large enterprise should freek out. This change will impact every individual’s calendar. Here is our plan
Complete the OS patch across all Laptops, Desktops, PDAs, Servers, LPARs etc by end of January
While this patch is being loaded, work with IBM and start testing Agents to fix Calendar entries that have been scheduled before OS Patch. Testing should include running agents on Rooms & Resource Database
Apart from R&R, we also have external application which we use to reserve Conf Rooms with VTC. Hence will have to patch application
Once all clients are patched, final step would be to run the agents. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping agents work as expected and don’t kill the servers
We use lot of application databases that use Calendar functions. We have to modify IBM agents to run against all our application databases.
Setup a swat team for March 11 to perform some testing. Not to mention, Keep IBM support person on standby
There is also an effort underway to patch Sametime Meeting Servers, as all meetings will move 1 hour ahead like Notes meetings.
Notes Admin who is not worried about this change, should read the problem between the lines, else will see Admin Assistance standing next to him on 12th March
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
I don’t know if I’d be freaking out but I’d be doing my homework and making sure everyone who needs to know is kept up to date.
We’ve been troubleshooting DWA issues caused by Microsofts KB 928388 (DST hot fix). End users (luckily a very small number) have gotten the “Your timezone is different…” IE popup. REmoving the patch fixes the issue. We can push the patch out later - prior to the onset of DST.
But research of the issue led me to the note about affected calendar entries existing prior to the patch. That won’t fly to well for Admins. or thier assistants.
Further research led me to the fact that MS hasn’t and apparently won’t offer a hot fix for WIndows 2000 servers (of which we have 100+).
All this leads to meeting to talk about the issues and come up with a game plan to limit the exposure.
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
Yesterday I sent email to all clients about this. One said they mentioned it to their server team but got no response. Another aksed for input from me.
The rest perhaps are like Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.
And it’s not like we didn’t know this was coming.
I think this will heat up over the next couple of weeks.
Subject: Is there a reason I shouldn’t be FREAKING OUT about the pending Daylight Savings time change
I would think that replications would be impacted by this change. If both machines participating in the replication were not OS patched accordingly, the time-date stamps would be 1 hour different during those 3 weeks.
At best, some updates from the patched to the unpatched machine could be delayed by an hour or more.
