Applying the "Best Practices" within a Domino Environment has always been a manual process of identification and application of within the environment. The Domino Development team has created DCT to help administration teams identify potential configuration issues based on best practices as defined by interactions with support and customer issues. The Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) tool is designed to assist the administration team in correcting issues that are identified in the environment and is in part reactive to existing problems. The goal of DCT is to identify configuration elements that may cause issues within the environment. It is important to understand that DCT ships with the 8.5 code stream, but can be used on all servers within the environment (the focus of the development team was to focus on servers running version 7.x and later).
The first step in leveraging DCT is to create the database. The database is based on the DCT.NTF template (included in the Administrator client installation or available for download from Lotus) and can be created on any client, thus not requiring the Notes Administration environment. Once the database is created, open the database and Check for Updates that may be available to the template or rule definitions.
If the computer accessing the updates to DCT has connectivity to the Internet, the tool will download all of the available updates and apply them to the application after accepting the license agreement.
After completing the download and update process, the DCT application will need to be restarted to ensure that the updates have been applied properly (in some cases, the client may need to be restarted).
Once the application is opened again, it is important to identify that the latest Rule Definitions have been applied. To start the process, click on the Run New Scan button.
When running the tool for the first time, the servers will need to be identified and selected for inclusion in the DCT process. Once the servers have been selected for inclusion, click on the Run Scan option.
The tool will present a splash screen while the process is running. The status bar will report the progress and identify the completion of the scan. Once the scan has been completed, click on the View Results button to review the diagnostic report.
The results will identify Critical, Warning (High), and Warning (Low) issues that have been identified. When an identified issue is selected, a side panel appears and identifies the issue along with an explanation, recommendation for resolution, and Links and References to the identified issue.
