Lotus Notes as a Virtual Application

Lotus Notes as a Virtual Application

So, the other day a teammate and I were considering ways to upgrade our Notes environment. First, let me tell you that I don't like to do work, if I don't have to. So, having said that, I was convinced that there must be an easier way to deploy the Lotus Notes client. Sure, Smart Upgrade is fun, but lets face it, there's work involved. The user needs to push some buttons and because we have our Notes Data folders on shared drives, I have to build a new install every time we upgrade. Citrix would be great, but it would take a very large (Expensive) server farm to provide access for all of our users.

Then is dawned on us,Virtual Applications! What if we could package The Lotus Notes client as a Virtual Application. For those of you not familiar with Virtual Applications, it's a technology for virtualizing Windows software. Administrators do not have to install all applications on the workstation anymore – applications will be packed into a virtual environment, a sandbox, which contains all necessary information such as registry entries and applications’ DLL files.

The best part is the application can be streamed to the user across a network or installed locally. Any network storage device can serve as a streaming server for hundreds or thousands of client PCs. To use Thinstall packages in a streaming fashion, simply place your Thinstall package in a location that is accessible to client PCs send a link to end-users to run the application directly, for example \server\sharename\application.exe. You can also create shortcuts on the end-user's desktop which point to the centrally hosted EXE package(s). When the user clicks on the shortcut, the application will automatically begin streaming to the client PC.

Since our users Data directory resides on a shared drive, and we built the virtual install with with this in mind, all a user needs to upgrade from Notes 7.x to Notes 8.x is log-in to a PC and then launch a shortcut on there workspace. The only this I had to do in advance was replace the users "names.ntf" with a newer version. When then launched the Notes 8.5 shortcut, it upgraded the design of there address book on start-up of the application. Then the 8.5 policy upgraded the design of the mail file. DONE!!! In less than 3 minutes I had upgraded the user form Notes 7.X to Notes 8.5. I can also run the program locally on a laptop by moving the application file to the local drive and pointing the shortcut there.

So now when I want to upgrade, All I need to do is change the application in one location and the users get the new version. OK.... so I know that you're saying "IBM WON'T SUPPORT THAT"....Who cares! IBM has never supported my data directory on a file server (not until recently), and for the most part I'm on my own for support issues. So, I'll let you know what happens as we move from Test to Pilot....

If anyone has tried this or has any comments, please let me know.