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Novell GroupWise® 6 Deployment and Best Practices

Novell GroupWise® 6 Deployment and Best Practices

Howard TaylerGroupWise Product Managerhtayler@novell.com

Steve WhitehouseSystems Engineerswhitehouse@novell.com

Frank SinakTechnical ConsultantUAB Health Systemfsinak@uabmc.edu

Jayson BergerAccount Managerjberger@novell.com

Gregory WhiteSystems Engineergbwhite@novell.com

Vision…one NetA world where networks of all types—corporate and public, intranets, extranets, and the Internet—work together as one Net and securely connect employees, customers, suppliers, and partners across organizational boundaries

MissionTo solve complex business and technical challenges with Net business solutions that enable people, processes, and systems to work together and our customers to profit from the opportunities of a networked world

Agenda

• Guidelines for deployment of Novell GroupWise® 6

The upgrade process

• Case Study: University of Alabama

• Leveraging new features of GroupWise 6 Server consolidation Proactive monitoring LDAP authentication The “Internet Office”

forguidelines

deploymeNt

Key Principles Behind the GroupWise 6 Upgrade

• Take no chances Pilot the code before rolling out enterprise-wide Remember, GroupWise is a mission-critical app

• Admin, agents, clients The “back end” is compatible with all 4.x and

5.x “back end” components The GroupWise 6 Client, WebAccess, and GWIA

cannot connect to a 5.x post office The GroupWise 5.x Client, WebAccess, and

GWIA connect fine to a 6.x post office

Upgrade At-A-Glance

• Install the Novell ConsoleOne® snap-ins

• Upgrade the primary domain• Upgrade secondary domains and post offices• Upgrade gateways• Deploy clients

• The upgrade is simple—just install and load the new code

Upgrading Domains

• Primary domain first• Communication

Primary must be able to communicate with all secondary domains

4.x and 5.x MTAs can communicate directly with a GroupWise 6 MTA

• Steps Install GW 6 MTA—agent install will merge startup files

(user ID and password can be in the directory now) Previous configuration settings in Novell eDirectory™ are

preserved Unload MTA and reload with GroupWise 6 MTA View domain with ConsoleOne to verify version Repeat for each secondary

Upgrading Post Offices

• The “owning” domain must be upgraded first• Steps

Install GroupWise 6 Post Office Agent (POA) Unload/reload POA Wait…

• Post office upgrade is complete when the POA has rebuilt/recovered WPHOST.DB

ConsoleOne will indicate version 6 for the post office

The Admin thread in the POA will show a “recovery count” of 1

Agent Installation Information

• Information to have on hand Domain name (for MTA startup file naming) Post office name (for POA startup file naming) Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to

domain and post office directories HTTP port for the monitoring agent

• Automatically launch agents? If this is used, and a POA and MTA are running

on the same server, the POA will need to be unloaded and reloaded later

Upgrading GroupWise WebAccess

• Upgrade servlet• Upgrade GWINTERs• ConsoleOne will have new objects

Provider (Application) objects for GroupWise Monitor, WebAccess, WebPublisher

Servlet objects

• Set default WebAccess WebAccess is now capable of redirection

• New features Rules, Signatures,“Mark Unread,” personal address book

creation

• Required for GroupWise wireless

Upgrade the GroupWise Internet Agent (GWIA)

• Run the agent install

• Configuration tips DSN (Delivery Status Notification) is now

available Relay does not require exceptions for

authenticated POP and IMAP Secure POP, IMAP, and SMTP require a

certificate• The certificate cannot be password-protected

Roll Out The GroupWise 6 Client

• Novell ZENworks®

Use .AXT files provided by Novell with GW6 SP1 Installation MUST deal with dependencies:

Windows Messaging is the critical piece

Or…• SetupIP with SETUP.CFG

Hide prompts from users Force standardization of paths Prevent help-desk calls

Using SetupIP and SETUP.CFG

• Run WRITEIP.EXE Software/admin/utility/setupip GUI for creating WRITEIP.INI and SETUPIP.EXE List paths to up to four web servers for client install

• Edit SETUP.CFG Show dialogs = No, Standard Install = Yes New option for showing individual dialogs “Windows Messaging = Yes” will require a reboot mid-

install

• Web server requirements Web server must support file dates Web server must list 400 files without truncating the list

deployment in

actioN

Deployment Case Study: The University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical

Center

The University of Alabamaat Birmingham (UAB)

• The cornerstone of the UAB Health System is the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

UAB was established in 1969 as an autonomous university within the University of Alabama system

It now serves as one of the nation’s top-ranked universities in research support and higher education and is home of a world-class medical center that has been serving Alabama for over 50 years

UAB is widely known for top-notch medical education and innovative medical and scientific research activities

• Participating in Novell Academic Licensing Agreement (ALA) and Novell Tech Support Premium 600 with PSE

The University of Alabamaat Birmingham Medical Center

• The medical center is part of the UAB Health System UAB Hospital—908 beds UAB Kirklin Clinic—30 distinct multidisciplinary clinical units UAB Health Centers—neighborhood clinics in Birmingham,

Hoover, Huntsville, Montgomery, Selma, and Tuscaloosa The University of Alabama Health Services Foundation

—a 660+ closed-group physician practice

UAB Eye Foundation Hospital—offering the latest ophthalmic microsurgery, corneal transplantation, and an emergency department dedicated to treating trauma to the eye

The University of Alabama School of Medicine—clinical training programs

Just the Facts…

• The University of Alabama Health System (UABHS) network is a campus area network consisting of over 685 hubs, routers and switches connecting 55 buildings and maintaining, on average, over 9,800 active user connections

• UABHS maintains two parallel network backbones An ATM LANE network and a Gigabit Ethernet network Full migration to Gigabit is currently in progress

• 11,000+ users (total), 8,000+ GroupWise users• 128+ servers (total), 16 GroupWise servers

68 NetWare, 49 NT/2000 3 domain servers, 10 Post Office servers, and 3 gateways

UABHS GroupWise LayoutPrimary Domain

UABInternet Agent

GWIA1MSGUAB

Secondary DomainHOS

MSGHOS

Secondary DomainHSF

MSGHSF

SFM/SVC ANC/CLN

MSGHSF01HSFPO1HSFPO2HSFPO5

MSGHSF02HSFPO3HSFPO4HSFPO6

Secondary Domain WEB1

MSGWEB1

Secondary Domain WEB2

MSGWEB2

Internet AgentGWIAMSGIA

GuinNT GuinNT2

MSGCLN02HOSPO12

MSGANC02HOSPO11

MSGSVC02HOSPO10

MAGADM02HOSPO09

MSGCLN01HOSP04HOSP08

CLNANCSVCADM

MSGANC01HOSP03HOSP07

MSGSVC01HOSP02HOSP06

MSGADM01HOSP01HOSP05

Why Move to GroupWise 6

• Secure POP/IMAP• Near full-featured WebAccess• Wireless• Backup/restore• GW Server clustering• Improved user move/post office

consolidation• Mailbox size restrictions

Pre-Installation—Do the Homework

• Read README.TXT Novell Product Documentation Installation

and Upgrade Manual “GroupWise 6 Upgrade Guide”

• By Tay Kratzer and Danita Zanré

• Developed implementation procedures Performed upgrade on test system Created check list

Pre-Installation—Do the Homework (cont.)

• Prepared the system Validated domains and post offices to be sure

no physical problems exists Backed-up each component immediately before

the upgrade Copied new startup files to each domain and

post office

• Prepared the users Scheduled a time Notified/reminded the users

Installation

• Used installation wizard Extended schema Walked through the wizard to upgrade each

component Upgraded the entire system at once

Post-Installation

• Rolled-out new GWCheck• Rolled-out ConsoleOne and new snap-ins• Flagged GWDOM.DC and GWPO.DC files as

read-only• Obtained new MAC view files from

Support.Novell.com and installed to each PO• Pushed client

Problems/Gotchas

• WebAccess WebServer would not load Installed Field Test File of GW 5.5 Enhancement

Pack Support Pack 3 to work around problem until a fix was found

• Relay exceptions With GW6, the IMAP or POP client must

authenticate to the server before they can relay No other exceptions need be defined

was no more difficult

“Upgrading to GroupWise 6

Support Pack”than applying a GroupWise

Frank SinakUAB Health Systems

principles

intoturning

solutioNs

Getting the Most Out of GroupWise 6

• Proactive System Monitoring

• Server Consolidation

• LDAP Authentication

• The “Internet Office”

Proactive System Monitoring

• Deploy GroupWise Monitor Use the same HTTP Monitoring password for all agents Monitor can track legacy agents via SNMP

• Set Thresholds Queues Agent Status Requests Pending Disk Space Rebuild/Recover operations

• Start with low thresholds Monitor with increasing severity Frequency, magnitude, and duration yield Impact

GroupWise Monitor

GroupWise Monitor

Learn more during

Session TUT221

Connect to

Domain Database

MTA

Poll agents via XML over HTTP

POAMTAPOA

POA

SNMP-based Mgmt System

Alerts

WAPDevice

Server Consolidation

• Why Consolidate? Reduced hardware expense Reduced administration overhead Increased administrative responsiveness The “Internet Office”

• Supporting Features GroupWise Smart Caching™ mode Multi-threaded GWCheck “Live” mode user moves Disk-space management GWCheck expire downloaded items

Online Mode vs. Caching ModePerformance Scalability Thresholds

• Lab Results on a Pentium 1266 system The POA starts to back up at around 570 c/s

requests per second Online mode: the 570/sec mark is around 4700

users Caching mode: 570/sec is around 14,000 users

• With Caching mode, performance thresholds are not your limiting factor

Preparation for Server Consolidation

• Deploy GroupWise 6 at the POA and all clients• Collect Benchmarks• Apply Mailbox Size Limitations

Be generous… just let online users know the space they are taking up

• Enforce Caching mode• Run GWCheck with “expire after download”

options• Collect Benchmarks

Meaningful Benchmarks to Record

• Post office directory size• Time required for backup/restore • Pending Client/Server Requests• Client/Server Requests per unit of time• Server Utilization• Messages in queues• End-user opinion

• Be sure to tune the server for best GroupWise performance

TID 10016883, Appendix B

Server Consolidation

• Based on your benchmarks, decide how many users you can support on a single server

• Consolidate by moving users from multiple post offices to a single post office

• The GroupWise 6 “Live” move process is 4 times faster than the 5.5 move process and is transparent to the end-user

Server Consolidation And The WAN

• Configure for Stability LAN links should be meshed WAN links should follow WAN topology One MTA and domain per server Immediate Purge ON Create separate routing domains for GWIA, Async, and

WebAccess as necessary

• Improvements in GroupWise 6 8KB chunk transmission (first appeared in 5.5ep SP2) Message size-based delay and blocking per link Message size restriction per user, domain, or post office

GroupWiseWebAccess

GroupWiseClient

LDAP Authentication to GroupWisePost

Office Agent

GroupWise6 SP1

LDAP Server

eDirectory 8.5

(or any LDAP v3 Directory)

Login Request Credentials

Results

Results

LDAP Authentication: Prerequisites and Limitations

• GroupWise 6 SP1 POA, WebAccess, and Client (client and WebAccess required for interface support of

password expiration dialogs)

• eDirectory 8.5 LDAP Server, with GroupWise users in the eDirectory 8.5 tree

OR

• User object MAIL attribute synchronization between GroupWise and the LDAP server of choice

• For full password expiration functionality the POA must be forced to BIND

LDAP Authentication: Post Office Configuration

required

recommended

leave blank636

LDAP Configuration: Why Leave the LDAP User Name Blank?

• Credential behavior with the LDAP user name and password

POA will use this user name and password to connect, and then do a ‘compare’ of the user-provided credentials against the LDAP directory

‘compare’ does not support expiration of passwords

• Credential behavior without the LDAP user name and password

POA will use the user-provided credentials to attempt to bind to the LDAP server.

Password expiration is supported for a BIND connection

LDAP Configuration: SSL Certificate Use and Requirements

• Why Use SSL? Without SSL LDAP credentials are passed in the clear—

this is unacceptable, even within your firewall

• SSL Certificate must be a Trusted Root certificate for the LDAP directory

This is the way the standard is written—it’s an LDAP requirement

• The LDAP SSL Port is 636—required in the address field

Learn more during

Session TUT222

LDAP Configuration: Using an external LDAP Directory

• By default, the POA will look for the DN-converted user name (CN=htayler, OU=groupwise, O=novell)

• If the LDAP directory is not structured like the tree GroupWise is using, this will fail, and the POA will fall back on the MAIL attribute.

This assumes a meta-directory synchronization tool (DirXML, anyone?) populating both GroupWise and the external LDAP directory, so that the GroupWise email address and the LDAP MAIL attribute match.

Reducing Your Network Costs: The Internet Office

WAN $$ CorporateNetwork

Reducing Your Network Costs: The Internet Office

GroupWise 6Internet Corporate

Network

Supporting Features for The Internet Office

•SSL Transfer Between Agents Securely use the Internet as your WAN for POA

and MTA traffic

•POA Proxy-Server Connectivity Allow remote users to connect to the POA

without requiring a VPN or a Live-Remote MTA

Learn more during

Session TUT222

The Internet Office: POA Proxy-Server Connectivity

POA @ IP Address “Z”

Proxy Server @ IP Address

“Y”

Client @ IP Address “X”

Requests sent to address “Y”

Requests sent to address “Z”

Responses sent to

address “Y”

Responses sent to

address “X”

POA Proxy Server Connectivity: Agent Configuration

start here

recommended

required

For More Information

• GroupWise 6 Best Practices Guide http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/gwmag/features/

a_best_practices_guide_gw.html

• GroupWise 6 Deployment Guide http://www.novell.com/info/collateral/docs/

4621213.01/4621213.pdf

• GroupWise 6 Upgrade Guide From Tay Kratzer and Danita Zanré http://www.caledonia.net/update6.html

• GroupWise 5.5 Best Practices Guide TID 2955576 at http://support.novell.com