Home
Installing
Use this documentation to install the HCL Domino® server and subsequently deploy the HCL Notes®client.
Upgrading
Use this documentation to upgrade the existing Domino® server and subsequently upgrade the Notes® client to a new release. You can also upgrade additional clients such as Domino Administrator and Domino Designer clients and additional features and plug-ins such as the embedded HCL Sametime® client.
Planning the deployment of the new release
Depending on the size of your organization and the number of Domino servers involved, an organization upgrade schedule may range from a few hours to a few weeks or months.

Installing
Use this documentation to install the HCL Domino® server and subsequently deploy the HCL Notes®client.
- Installing and upgrading Domino® servers
  Perform a new or upgrade install of one or many Domino® servers.
- Downloading and distributing software using AutoUpdate
  AutoUpdate notifies you of the latest HCL Domino and Domino product family available on the Domino server, and allows you to download the software. You can also use it to distribute software to groups or selected Domino servers.
- Installing and upgrading Notes® clients
- Upgrading
  Use this documentation to upgrade the existing Domino® server and subsequently upgrade the Notes® client to a new release. You can also upgrade additional clients such as Domino Administrator and Domino Designer clients and additional features and plug-ins such as the embedded HCL Sametime® client.
  - Security considerations prior to upgrading
    It’s important to review your security practices before upgrading, especially if you are upgrading from an old version.
  - Preparing your environment for the upgrade
    Time spent doing a thorough evaluation of your environment prior to upgrading is time well spent. Capturing baselines of your existing server infrastructure allows you to compare how the upgraded environment is performing.
  - Planning the deployment of the new release
    Depending on the size of your organization and the number of Domino servers involved, an organization upgrade schedule may range from a few hours to a few weeks or months.
    - Deployment best practices
      Here are deployment best practices, many of which are particularly important in enterprise environments that have many thousands of users.
    - Creating a Domino server test Environment
      If you do not have a test environment, it is highly recommended that you create one.
    - Testing application upgrades
      In general, application upgrades occur seamlessly without issue. To test Domino application upgrades, follow these best practices.
    - Piloting the upgrade in the production environment with a small set of users
      Pilot the upgrade in the production environment, considering the following as you do:
    - Deployment sequence for small and medium businesses
      Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are generally defined as ones having 10,000 users or less and 50 Domino servers or less.
    - Deployment sequence for enterprise businesses
      An enterprise business is generally defined as one having more than 10,000 users and more than 50 servers. It can take many weeks or even months to upgrade all servers in an enterprise environment.
  - Upgrading a Domino server
    Before upgrading a Domino server, review the upgrade considerations and choose the upgrade option to use.
  - Upgrading post-V11 AD Password Sync to V12.0.2 or later
    Upgrade Domino AD Password Sync installations that use Domino 12.0 or 12.0.1 to Domino 12.0.2 or later in order to use the new "AD Password Sync" server install type available in 12.0.2 and later.
  - Planning the deployment of a new version of Notes
    Understand the things to consider and actions to take before installing a new version of HCL Notes.

Planning the deployment of the new release

Depending on the size of your organization and the number of Domino servers involved, an organization upgrade schedule may range from a few hours to a few weeks or months.

An organization with a small number of users and a handful of Domino servers can easily be upgraded in a single day and even in a matter of hours. However, an enterprise with hundreds of thousands of users in multiple domains on hundreds of Domino servers located throughout the world will implement an upgrade plan that spans several months. Fortunately, one of the great strengths of Domino and Notes is that it maintains a strong interoperability story between releases that makes this possible.

The number of ways to deploy a Domino and Notes upgrade is almost limitless. In this section, we provide a few examples of approaches to consider using in your own deployments plans. Adapt these as needed to your circumstances.

To take advantage of all new features and fixes, keeping as close to the current release of Domino and Notes as possible, including Fix Pack (FP) releases, is recommended.