Sizing of Domino servers

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

We want to reduce the number of mail servers from 8 (4 clusters with 2 in each) to 2 (1 cluster) since we are not using Domino as our primary mail system anymore. I’ve tried to find information about how much CPU , RAM etc. is needed for the amount of users we have.

All I found was so far is IBM Developer https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/domino85-performance/index.html but it is from 2009 and compares Windows 2003 (64) with Domino 8.5 (32) installations. I need some information that are more updated like Windows 2016 (64) and Domino 9.0.1 (64).

What we want to do is run 2 Windows 2016 servers with Domino 9.0.1 installed. 4x2.30GHz CPU, 16GB RAM all 64 bit for roughly 4000 users.

Thanks for your input.

2

Subject: answers

I would say 99% are on version 9.0.1 notes client installed locally. We have allowed local replication but I can not say how many uses it. Traveler is running in a different domain on separate servers for all users.

On how many of the endusers that are accessing the Domino servers concurrently I would say that maybee 3000. But not all are working, they just have the client started.

Thanks for the tip of contacting our Buisness Partner to request a Techline sizing.

3

Subject: this should work

Looking at your numbers i think that you could get the job done with a cluster of 2 Domino servers with the HW specs you mentioned. Put all 4000 mail files on both servers, assign server1 as the home server for users 1…2000 and server2 as the home server for users 2001…4000. So under normal circumstances a Domino server would have to handle not more than 2000 active users. Only in case of failover the load on one server would increase for a certain period of time.
If you look at the figures from the old Domino 8.5 Enterprise Cluster Mail Performance tests
https://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/domino-8.5-performance-for-lotus-notes-users-inotes-users-and-server-performance-for-enterprise-server-clusters?open https://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/domino-8.5-performance-for-lotus-notes-users-inotes-users-and-server-performance-for-enterprise-server-clusters?open
they already had 3000 active users per server and 6000 users in total on server hardware less powerful than what you have available.

4

Subject: RAM and hard disk

Hi, some additional infos:

Spend your servers some more RAM (e.g. 24 GB), 64bit Windows and Domino will work with 16 GB but they run better and faster with more RAM.

One very critical part is the IO on your attached hard disk. Stephan Wissel wrote an excellent article “how to build a high performance Domino Server” on this:
Building a high performance Domino Server - NotesSensei's Blog https://notessensei.com/blog/2009/04/building-a-high-performance-domino-server.html

Overall you should run DAOS and Transaction logging (check that your backup software can handle this). From many years of experience I recommend to run Domino with separate disks for

  • OS and Domino program code
  • Domino data directory
  • Transaction logging
  • DAOS
  • Full text index
5

Subject: questions

In general 4000 users shouldn’t be a problem. However, it comes down to what type of load they’re actually creating. To get a better understanding, here are a few questions:

What type of clients are you using with the Domino mail servers (i.e. Notes clients - what versions, iNotes, Verse on prem, Outlook/IMSMO, mobile clients via Traveler, etc.) and what’s their distribution (i.e. number of Notes client users vs. iNotes users vs, etc.)?
How many of your endusers are accessing the Domino servers concurrently?
How many of the Notes clients are using a local mail replica instead of accessing their mail file on the Domino server directly?

I’m not aware of any newer publications with sizing information than what you already mentioned. You could also ask your IBM Business Partner to request a Techline sizing. However, you would still need to provide answers to the questions listed above (and more).