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Administering
This documentation provides information about the administration tools for HCL Domino.
Administering with Domino Administrator
This documentation provides information about the administration tools for managing and monitoring servers and databases.
Managing servers
Manage Domino® servers by performing any of these tasks.
Transaction logging
Domino® transaction logging captures changes made to a database and writes them to a transaction log. The logged transactions are then written to disk in a batch, either when resources are available or when scheduled.
Fault recovery
You can set up fault recovery to automatically handle server crashes.

Administering
This documentation provides information about the administration tools for HCL Domino.
- Administering with AdminCentral
  The AdminCentral application (admincentral.nsf) is automatically created by adminP on the Domino administration server. You can open AdminCentral directly from your Notes Standard or Nomad web client, without the need to start Domino Administrator. This application provides a simplified and easy-to-use way of managing fully functional Notes users and groups in a Domino deployment.
- Administering with Domino Administrator
  This documentation provides information about the administration tools for managing and monitoring servers and databases.
  - Administration tools
    Topics in this section describe the tools you can use to administer a Domino® server.
  - Managing users
    The Administration Process helps you manage users by automating many of the associated administrative tasks. For example, if you rename a user, the Administration Process automates changing the name throughout databases in the Notes® domain by generating and carrying out a series of requests, which are posted in the Administration Requests database.
  - Monitoring servers
    This section describes how to use the tools and features that help you monitor a Domino® system.
  - Managing servers
    Manage Domino® servers by performing any of these tasks.
    - Changing the server administrator
      If the name of the former administrator is explicitly listed in the access control list (ACL) for the Domino® Directory, delete the name of the former administrator from the ACL. Add the name of the new administrator and assign the administrator Manager access.
    - Setting and managing passwords for the server console
      Set server console passwords to protect against unauthorized use of the server console.
    - Decommissioning a Domain Search server
      If you want the server that creates full-text indexes of the Domino® domain to resume duty as a regular Domino server, remove it from the appropriate group in the Domino Directory, edit its Server document, and then delete some files from its directory structure.
    - Decommissioning a server
      You use the Decommission Server Analysis tool when you are consolidating existing servers and/or permanently removing a server from service. Whether you are combining two servers into one server or renaming a server, the result is the same -- the old server name is replaced with the new server name.
    - Deleting a server name
      You can use the Administration Process to delete references to a server from the Domino® Directory, and from database ACLs and Extended ACLs. The Administration Process automatically deletes mail-in database documents and cross-certificate documents as necessary during the Delete Server process.
    - Dropping user sessions on a server
      Dropping user sessions from a server may be useful when you need to make a database or server temporarily unavailable to correct a problem; users can reconnect after you are ready. You can drop one user session or all user sessions for the current database, or selected user sessions, from the server.
    - Finding a server name in the domain with the Domino® Administrator
      You can search for a server name in the domain and then view a log that includes document links and directory links to each occurrence of the server name.
    - Recertifying a server ID
      Use the original certifier to recertify a server ID that has a certificate that is about to expire.
    - Uninstalling a Domino® partitioned server
      You can remove all server partitions from a computer or you can remove just one server partition.
    - Reinstalling or moving a Domino® server from one computer to another
      Use this procedure to reinstall a server if an error occurs and the installer does not complete during the install of an incremental installer, or if the Domino® server is crashing and troubleshooting does not reveal the root cause.
    - Transaction logging
      Domino® transaction logging captures changes made to a database and writes them to a transaction log. The logged transactions are then written to disk in a batch, either when resources are available or when scheduled.
      - How transaction logging works
        Following is a general example of transaction logging from both the administrator's and the employees' points of view.
      - Preparing for transaction logging
        Transaction logging captures all the changes that are made to databases and writes them to a transaction log. The logged transactions are written to disk in a batch when resources are available or at specified intervals.
      - Setting up a Domino® server for transaction logging
        You can enable and set up transaction logging on any server.
      - Changing transaction logging settings
        You can change the transaction logging settings by editing the Server document.
      - Disabling transaction logging for a specific database
        After you set up transaction logging on a server, Domino® logs all databases on that server. You can disable transaction logging of specific databases, but this practice is not recommended because if unlogged databases are corrupted during a system or media failure, you must run the Fixup task to recover the database.
      - View logging
        View logging provides a way to maintain consistent views in failure conditions and allows media recovery to update those views.
      - Using transaction logging for recovery
        Transaction logging is an integral part of recovering from system and media failures. Using transaction logging provides insurance against system failure, but creating regular backups is essential so that you can recover data after a failure.
      - Fault recovery
        You can set up fault recovery to automatically handle server crashes.
      - Enabling fault recovery
        You can enable fault recovery.
      - Specifying a cleanup script for fault recovery
        You can create an optional script that runs before any other cleanup takes place. Use the file FAULT_RECOVERY.ATT to collect the information from the script.
    - Installing and running NSD as a Microsoft™ Windows™ service
      Installing and running NSD as a Microsoft Windows service is no longer available as of Domino 10.
    - Setting up a Fault Reports database
      The Notes/Domino Fault Reports database stores data that is collected at the time of a server crash. Data is collected from both the client and the server and can then be used to measure client reliability and determine the areas where problems exist.
    - Client and server diagnostics
      Use these tasks to perform client and server diagnostics to collect diagnostic information after a server or client crash.
    - Collecting diagnostic information after a server or client crash
      The automatic diagnostic collection tool collects diagnostic data after server and client crashes and sends the collected data to a mail-in database when the server or client restarts. You can then use the collected data to determine the cause of the crash.
    - Using the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT directory
      The IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT database contains data that has been collected using the Domino® Configuration Collector and the Automatic Diagnostic Data Collection tool. It also includes system information files and documents that have been exported from the Domino Directory and saved as .dxl documents using the Save command entered at the Domino server console.
    - The Domino® server log file (LOG.NSF)
      Every Domino® server has a log file (LOG.NSF) that reports all server activity and provides detailed information about databases and users on the server. The log file is created automatically when you start a server for the first time.
    - Controlling the size of the log file
      By default, the log file (LOG.NSF) records information about the Domino® system.
    - The Domino® Web server log (DOMLOG.NSF)
      You can log your server activity and Web server requests to the Domino® Web server log (DOMLOG.NSF) database. This option may be preferable if you want to create views and view data in different ways.
    - Using console log mirroring
      Console log mirroring causes a new server thread to be created which monitors all messages written to the Console Log file and duplicates these messages into another file. When this new file is filled, the thread closes the mirrored file and creates a new file into which subsequent messages are written. You can delete the closed mirrored files at your discretion.
    - Using the Domino® Configuration Tuner to evaluate server settings
      The Domino® Configuration Tuner (DCT) evaluates server settings according to a growing catalog of best practices. All servers in a single domain can be evaluated together. DCT generates reports that explain the issues DCT uncovers, suggests mitigations, and provides references to supporting publications.
    - Activity Logging
      You use activity logging to collect information about the activity in your enterprise. You can use this information to charge users for the amount they use your system, monitor usage, conduct resource planning, and determine if clustering would improve the efficiency of your system.
    - Managing a cluster
      After you have set up a cluster, you can perform tasks to manage it.
  - Managing databases
    Topics in this section describe how to set up and manage Domino® databases.

Fault recovery

You can set up fault recovery to automatically handle server crashes.

When the server crashes, it shuts itself down and then restarts automatically, without any administrator intervention. A fatal error such as an operating system exception or an internal panic terminates each Domino® process and releases all associated resources. The startup script detects the situation and restarts the server. If you are using multiple server partitions and a failure occurs in a single partition, only that partition is terminated and restarted.

Domino® records crash information in the data directory. When the server restarts, Domino® checks to see if it is restarting after a crash. If it is, an email is sent automatically to the person or group in the Mail Fault Notification to field. The email contains the time of the crash, the server name, and, if available, the FAULT_RECOVERY.ATT file, which includes additional failure information from an optional cleanup script.

The fault-recovery system is initialized before the Domino® Directory can be read. During this initialization, fault-recovery settings are read from the NOTES.INI file, and then later read from the Domino® Directory and saved back to the NOTES.INI file. Any changes to the Domino® Directory or the NOTES.INI file become effective when the Domino® server is restarted. To disable the reading of the Domino® Directory, and subsequent update to the NOTES.INI file, use the NOTES.INI setting FaultRecoveryFromIni=1.

Operating systems and fault recovery

Because fault recovery runs after an exception has occurred, it cannot rely on Domino's internal facilities. Instead, fault recovery makes heavy use of operating system features.

UNIX™ systems primarily use message queues. Therefore, it is important to configure the operating system so that sufficient message queue resources are available. If you are using multiple Domino® server partitions, each partition requires a complete set of resources. Consult your operating system documentation for additional details on configuring message queue parameters.

Microsoft™ Windows™ 2003 systems do not require any system resource changes.