UPGRADING TO LOTUS NOTES 6 AND LOTUS DOMINO 6

Replacing Domino 4.6 MTAs with Domino 6 mail servers
To illustrate replacing Domino 4.6 MTAs with Domino 6 mail servers, consider an infrastructure with three Domino servers: MTA1, Hub-E, and Hub-W. MTA1 is the SMTP server for the organization, and Hub-E and Hub-W are hub servers that route mail to a number of spoke servers. If you upgrade MTA1 to Lotus Domino 6 and leave the hubs at Lotus Domino 4.6, MTA1 performs all necessary message conversion, as it did when the server was at Lotus Domino 4.6. When you upgrade Hub-E and Hub-W to Lotus Domino 6, MTA1 routes Internet messages to the hubs in MIME, and the hubs perform message conversion for Domino 4.6 spokes. As you upgrade spoke servers to Lotus Domino 6, the hub servers perform fewer conversions. However, the spoke servers must convert messages for their Notes 4.6 clients. Finally, when you upgrade the Notes clients to Lotus Notes 6, MIME messages can be routed from MTA1 to the destination client without conversion.

This upgrade process spreads the conversion load over more servers as the process progresses -- from one server (MTA1) initially to many servers (the spokes) towards the end. It is important to consider the performance and capabilities of the hubs and spoke servers -- for example, the spokes might not have enough spare performance to handle the conversion load, which might necessitate a different upgrade strategy.

Domino 6 SMTP routing attempts to locate the Internet Address for a Notes user either within the message (if the message is created by a Notes 6, IMAP, or POP client) or within the $Users view in the Domino Directory. For best performance, populate the Internet Address field in your organization's Person documents (if the Short Name field does not already contain an Internet address for each user) with the administration tool for Internet addresses. Also, register new users with a Domino 6 Administrator to ensure that each user has a valid Internet address.

For more information, see the topic Populating the Internet Address field in Person documents.

Note You can add the variable MailConvertMIMEOnTransfer=1 to the Domino server's NOTES.INI file to force the server to convert inbound mail from the Internet from MIME to the format specified in each recipient's Person document in the Domino Directory. This setting causes the router on the Domino 6 server to mimic the functionality of the Domino 4.6 SMTP/MIME Message Transfer Agent. If you do not set this variable, the Domino 6 router forwards the native MIME messages to the next hop servers. Any necessary conversion takes place on transfer to a Domino 4.6 server or on delivery to the user's mail file.

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