The benefits of partitioning Domino on the AS/400 can be easier understood with a few examples. We'll start with a basic Lotus Notes/Domino scenario; an organization which has implemented email and calendaring/scheduling, and is currently deploying Notes-based applications. We will compare a typical NT implementation against what's possible with Domino for the AS/400 and explain the value of each.

Windows NT Server versus AS/400 (an example)
The requirements for our example organization are the same as they are in many organizations; email must be constantly available -- on a 24x7 basis. Using NT, the solution would be to cluster two (or more) separate servers of comparable sizes. If one Domino server in the cluster were to crash, the second server in the cluster would automatically continue processing email and calendaring/scheduling requests.

The addition of Domino and Notes-based applications to the environment adds additional complexity. It's certainly possible to insert the applications into the NT cluster, but if application usage continues to grow, it will certainly place a strain on the performance capabilities of the NT servers. It performance problems occur, another NT server must be added to handle application usage. If the same requirements are placed on the application server (24x7 availability), it must be clustered, and thus necessitates the addition of yet another NT server (we like to call this YANTS syndrome). [I love this term: we're installing yet another NT box here at ZATZ today and we never had a term to describe this… YANTS… that is so cool! -- DG]

It must be noted than an additional NT server is recommended for application development. If you don't provide an application development server, you and your developers will be working and testing applications in a production environment. This gives way to the possibility that buggy application code may crash the servers, something not allowed in an ideal environment, and certainly not acceptable in this example.

As an additional complexity, let's examine what will happen when we wish to implement virus scanning of SMTP-based email. Do we install the virus scanner on one Domino server in the cluster? A typical reaction is to move SMTP processing onto a separate server (again, YANTS syndrome).

Now, let's add to our environment a fax server, such as Lotus Fax for Domino. Then, add a QuickPlace server. Now our users want to implement HTTP services to mail clients and add a high volume Web-enabled customer service module. This will relieve the call traffic for support by 40% and rapidly become mission critical. Then, because of security concerns on authentication by those Web users, we implement a Domino authentication server that will sit on the Internet and provide access to applications inside the firewall through a Web browser. Each application potentially results in yet another NT server (YANTS, YANTS, YANTS). The result is that a single NT-based Domino requirement has ended in the implementation of an NT server farm. While each server may operate independently, each server must be maintained, managed, and upgraded independently, adding to the overall cost of the Domino environment. Add to that cost the implications of bandwidth requirements (all the clustered servers have to replicate content to maintain failover integrity) and the overall cost increases. Add up the Domino server licensing, and the cost increases again. Now ask yourself what we need to do about enterprise backup and increase the cost again.