Managed Replicas and Lotus Notes 8.5.2

Lotus Notes 8.5.2 was released earlier today and as the good techies we are, I am sure most of us are already running 8.5.2 on our machines (I has been running beta versions of 8.5.2 for last few months).

So, one of the new features being included in this new release is "Managed Replicas", which means the Notes client will take care of the replication process, schedule, creation, deletion (if needed or corrupt), fixup (question to IBM... what about compact) and more.

I personally think this a great feature that will make more organizations to use replicas, however, I haven't seen to much buzz about it. For many years, Local replicas has been available to the Lotus Notes client, and most of my customers are now using it. However, they didn't use them before because:

• Didn't really understand the benefits
• Afraid of extra work
• Additional troubleshooting
• PC Resources needed

IBM has published this Technote which explain Managed Replicas and its behavior, but, let's still make sure we explain why Managed or Standard replicas are good for you and why and how you should use/deploy them properly.

Configuring managed replicas using the Desktop Settings document
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21437957


Another document I'd like to see in the near future is the difference between "Standard Replica" vs "Managed Replica". With Policies and Code (if required) you can fully customized how Standard Replicas are created and how the communicate with the servers without user intervention, so, with "Managed Replicas" you will be able to do the same but also allow the Notes client to control if a Managed Replica should be re-created or Fixed because of corruptions.

For example, my current client wanted to deploy Local Replicas to the entire organization (5,000 users) via Policies, but, a lot of these users are also Citrix users and they didn't want to have Local Replicas created when using Citrix. I was able to customize the whole process and now it works as the customer wants and they are happy with it. Based on this scenario, I have the following questions:

• Will we be able to control how Managed Replicas works via LotusScript ?
• Will Managed Replica replication be faster than Standard Replica replication (if not using selective replication)?

I will be able to answer my own questions in the next few days as I upgrade more and more servers, but in the meantime feel free to share your opinions.

Happy Upgrade !