For the past 17 years, I've been serving organizations and individuals that use Lotus Notes to get things done. My focus is on high performance knowledge work and I teach the importance of having the right tools for the job and knowing how to use them to be productive. Unfortunately, many people don't give a thought to their systems and what makes them work well.
Instead of using tools that are optimized for the job, users often struggle and are less productive than they could be. That's like using a dull saw to cut a tree down -- you can do it, but it's going to take a lot more work to get the job done.As I work with and coach clients around the world that use Lotus Notes, I'm often asked why Notes and their systems in general seem to get slower and slower. While there are many parts to the answer, the good news is that there is much you can do to improve the user experience in terms of performance.
First, let me provide some context: for purposes of this discussion I'll be referring to the Lotus Notes Mail file; however, the concepts I describe can be applied equally to any Lotus Notes database or application.
Before we can talk about the things that can be done to speed up Lotus Notes, we must first understand what aspects of your system and Notes affect performance. I have broken these down into three areas: System, Lotus Notes, and User Data. Elements in each of these areas will affect end-user performance. Some are things you can change easily; some are not. Let's take a look:
I. SYSTEM
There's no question that better and faster hardware will [usually] lead to better overall performance at the desktop. But, not everyone can run out and replace their hardware. Still, it's valuable to understand the system elements that will affect your performance. these include:
CPU and RAM Memory - the speed of the processor and amount of available memory will always play a huge part in determining overall performance. Often, big leaps in performance can be gained simply be adding additional memory to the system. An $80 investment in memory chips can save hours each week. Bottom line: the more memory your system has available, the less time it will spend swapping memory to disk.
# of applications running - Each time you open an application, additional system memory is required. If your system does not have enough memory (RAM) it will swap to disk and you will be constrained by the speed of your disk. (See below). If you have lots of memory available, great - go ahead and open 20 applications. If not, consider closing a few windows.
Hard Drive Disk Speed - It goes without saying that the faster the disk the better overall performance. But every disk will run faster when the files are defragmented. Defragmenting optimizes the information on the disk so thet it can be located and retrieved as quickly as possible. This is something anyone can do and it doesn't cost a penny. I recommend running your disk defragmenter at least once a month. I run mine once a week and sometimes more often when I want higher performance. The less time the disk has to spend locating all of the parts of a file, the faster the response.
Disk Encryption - If you are running software that encrypts the contents of your disk, know that you are trading security for speed. Big time. Each time you read or write data it has to be encrypted/decrypted and you pay a penalty in speed. I usually recommend encrypting only a portion of the disk drive where sensitive documents are stored and, when possible, use hardware encryption. IF you do encrypt your hard drive, be sure to disable encryption in your Lotus Notes databases as you will pay a steep price for double encryption. (More on that later.)
Disk Space Available - it's important that you have sufficient disk space for swap files, temporary files, indexes, etc. I try not to exceed 60% of usable disk space.
OK, we've covered the system elements. Your key takeaway should be to use memory wisely and defragment your disks regularly. Now, let's take a look at Lotus Notes...
II. LOTUS NOTES
Basic or Standard Mode? - Lotus Notes 8.x provides many powerful and productive new features but if you are running on an older system it may slow to a crawl. If you are running Notes 8.x and your system does not meet IBM's recommended minimum requirements , consider running in "Basic" mode instead of "Standard" mode. This will speed things up until you can get faster hardware.
Database Encryption - Lotus Notes databases can be encrypted. The good news is that the encryption is hidden from the user and the entire process is transparent to the user. Well, mostly. When you enable encryption on a Notes database, every read or write needs to be processed by the encryption software and this can slow down performance. For laptops, I recommend using medium encryption; for desktops, I usually turn off encryption. In any case, if you encrypt your Notes data, do not also encrypt the disk drive that it's stored on. if you do, your system will be come painfully slow, as every read or write must be encrypted not once but twice. Did I mention that encryption will slow down your system? It's a tradeoff between security and performance.
Local or Server Replica? - The IBM recommended best practice for Lotus Notes & Domino performance is to use Local replicas. With few exceptions, my experience has been shown a local replica will almost always outperform a server replica. When you use a local replica you are not constrained by the speed or congestion of your network or internet connection. This becomes even more relevant if you are using WiFi, a wireless WAN card, or a VPN connection. Bottom line, for maximum performance, I always recommend using a local replica. The good news is that you can set this up in 2 minutes and then forget about it while Lotus Notes handles the details. It is also possible for the Notes administrator to enable this via a policy setting for all users.
Network Compression Enabled? - Current versions of Lotus Notes support network compression. If you do not have this turned on, DO IT NOW. It will greatly boost your overall Lotus Notes performance. In my experience, it doubled the performance of databases that I access on my server. It also dramatically reduced my replication time.
Full-Text Index, or Not? - Lotus Notes can build a full-text index of all of the information in a Notes database, including information contained inside most file attachments. This is an easy way to speed up performance. When full-text indexing is enabled, Notes has less work to do to find the information you seek. Bottom line: for faster performance, always turn on full-text indexing, especially on your mail file.
OK, we've covered the Lotus Notes elements. Your key takeaway should be to use a local replica, with full-text indexing enabled, and the lowest level of encryption needed. Now, let's look at your data...
III. USER DATA
There are several elements of user data that work together to determine the performance you will receive when using Lotus Notes. This is especially true when using your mail file (which, as I explained, also contains calendar and tasks and more...). Let's look at these in greater detail:
File Size - In Lotus Notes, all of the data and applications are stored in a file on disk, often known as an .NSF file. While there's no practical limit to the size of this file, there are some things you need to know - especially when it comes to the size of your mail file. The first thing to know is that your Lotus Notes mail file doesn't contain just mail. It also contains your calendar and tasks. Also, it may contain contacts and journal/notebook entries if you sync these to your mail file. The point is, there's a lot going on in your mail file and it is constantly accessed during the course of the day. The smaller you can keep your file sizes, the better. I like to keep current information in my mail file and I archive old information when possible. This helps me keep my mail file size down and my system running as fast as possible.
# Documents - It almost goes without saying that the more documents (emails/calendar/tasks/attachments, etc) that you have in your database the more that needs to be processed. I'm a pack rat and I like to keep lots of history, but I don't keep it all in my mail file. (That's what archives are for.) For faster performance, store all you need to (or are permitted to) and no more. Don't be afraid to use the delete key.
# Folders & Views - Folders and Views are powerful features of Lotus Notes that allow you to organize and view the contents of a Notes database in different way. Used appropriately, these can greatly boost your productivity. At the same time, it's important to create only the folders and views that you need. Creating custom views is beyond the reach of most users so I will talk about folders instead. A folder is a collection of documents in a Notes database. Each time you open a folder, it must review and collect the documents it needs to show you. The more folders and documents to process the longer it can take. I'm just say'n. One more thing: if you sync your mail file to a PDA or smartphone, some of these devices may have limits on the number of folders that will sync. For example, some BlackBerry devices/software will not sync more than 255 folders.
Heavy Tasks or Calendar user? - The inbox folder in the Lotus Notes mail file shows all newly received email. There's no processing for Notes to do. On the other hand, if you are someone that actually processes your mail into calendar or tasks (and I hope you do) you will need to switch between the inbox and other views. These other views make use of a SELECT statement in Notes to filter the information that you see. The benefit is that you see only what you need; however, there's a small performance hit for that SELECT statement. If you have a Notes mail file or a system that is already slow and you suddenly start using Calendar, tasks, or even eProductivity in a big way, it may feel like Notes has suddenly slowed down. It probably hasn't. Rather, your usage pattern has shifted from living in your inbox to using other views. The good news is that many/any of the tips in this blog post can be applied to help improve performance.
eProductivity Enabled? - If you are using eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes, then several additional views will be added to your mail file. These views allow eProductivity to filter and present only the relevant information to you when you need to see it. This productivity comes at a small price in terms of system performance, as eProductivity needs to scan through your mail file to find the relevant information. If you are running on a local replica and your Lotus Notes is already running fast, then this will be barely noticeable. On the other hand, if you are running on a server replica or if your Lotus Notes is already running slow for any of the reasons mentioned above, your performance could slow dramatically. The good news, is that there are many things that you can do to easily and quickly boost your performance and productivity.
File Attachments - Email is an easy way to exchange files with others, but it's not the best place to store them. I won't lecture you on what you should/should not store in your mail file here, but I will remind you that large file attachments will slow down your system. For most Notes databases, this is barely noticeable, but in your mail file, where performance is important, I recommend deleting or archiving any file attachments that you do not need to have in your mail file.
CONCLUSION
I hope you find that this blog post helpful and that you are able to use some of the information I have provided to improve your system performance and your personal productivity. This information comes from my experience building systems and from my 17 years of consulting and coaching clients that use Lotus Notes. If you have feedback or experience to share, I hope you will take the time to post your comments so that we can all learn.
Discussion/Comments (42):
Good post Eric.
I've archived (manually as my admin doesn't allow it through normal channels) a lot of emails but only regained a small amount of space.
I'm pretty sure all emails were duplicates of emails that are still referred to in projects!
Question - How do I archive completed projected and the associated emails etc
Thanks
Paul
Ian Randall (): 1/27/2010 7:24:02 PM
No discussion about optimizing performance would be complete without mentioning Solid State Devices (SSD).
SSD makes the Lotus Notes Client perform like it's turbo charged. Once you see Notes running in SSD you will never, ever, ever go back.
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 1/27/2010 8:04:23 PM
Hi Paul. there's no easy way to archive a single completed project and related actions - yet. Stay tuned...
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 1/27/2010 8:05:24 PM
Hi Ian, you are right, Solid State Disks (SSD) can dramatically change improve the Notes experience. My primary focus in writing the blog post was to help users understand the dynamics and ultimately the things they can do themselves to help improve performance.
Paul Gardner (http://paulgardner.info/): 1/27/2010 8:08:03 PM
Thanks for that Eric. I look forward to it :)
Fred Janssen (http://www.imtech.nl/is): 1/28/2010 3:03:43 AM
Very good post Eric.
One remarks (probably not for eProductivity users as they tend to clean out their Inbox daily/weekly), but all other user and Administrators may benefit.
A big performance drain can be the number of documents in the Inbox. As most users tend to live in the Inbox and all mail is sent there by default it is the most update index on any Domino Mail server. Even a small amount of users with enormous Inboxes can hog server processing power. We have seen dramatic improvements after cleaning-out users Inboxes. Inbox Maintenance is a big help in this process as it can remove mail from Inboxes periodically.
Remember: Mail is Removed from the Inbox (thus remains accessible from the All Documents view) it is NOT deleted.
Chris Blatnick (http://interfacematters.com): 1/28/2010 6:44:22 AM
These are all great tips. The unfortunate thing is that most of them are not under the control of the normal end user at GiantBigCompany, Inc. It is sad to see the productivity loss (not only in Notes, but in all applications) due to poor hardware, unplanned software implementations, etc. Hardware refresh cycles are the bane of end user existence.
Brian@Millipore (): 1/28/2010 8:19:39 AM
A quick one for 8.5.1 users...
1) a disk defrag can help quite a bit.
2) if you upgraded from 8.5.0 and you have some time, delete the 'workspace' folder in the data directory and re-install. This is really key if you had designer running under 8.5.0.
3) Lastly, there is a great post out there about giving your JVM more than the 256 of memory. It can be changed for 8.5.1 in the 'Framework' folder within the Notes program files. C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\framework\rcp\deploy\jvm.properties
Open it in text pad and change the first line to vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx512m or if you have 4gb of mem, try vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1024m. Use this one cautiously and be mindful NOT to exceed your actual memory. { Link }
Keith Collyer (): 1/29/2010 6:38:41 AM
I'm sure Paul Gardner (of all people) knows this, but if anyone sees his comment and doesn't know, after archiving, like after deleting, you need to compress the mail file to recover the now unused, but still allocated, space. Why Notes doesn't do this in the background is beyond me - as an end-user you should not need to care, or even know, about this sort of implementation detail
Chris (http://www.warumblog.de): 3/1/2010 2:39:10 PM
Nice ideas, but it is not performance tuning, that does the trick, but ditching Lotus Notes.
I'm a Lotus Notes Developer, but fortunately we are using MS Outlook for email in our organisation. When I'm at a customer, it is always terrible to see, when they start one action in Notes it completely blocks access to every part of the program, reading mails while waiting for another task is impossible.
Notes 8.5? Terrible bloatware; the client has gained several MBs memory usage but not one really important bugfix for problems since 4.x is included. RTF-Tables - not available, one single usable programming language - we have 3, up-to-date Java implementation - what for?
Notes is slow - live with it.
Padmanaban.P.N. (): 5/19/2010 11:42:54 PM
I have made changes in the Jvm properties. Its working perfectly. If we restart the system, its taking too much time.
Luis Fernando Garcia (): 7/6/2010 5:37:59 AM
Well, in my case, as far as I turn off the computer (Dual Core 2.5GHz, 1GB) the first and ONLY thing to do is start Lotus Client (8.5) type my password and go to take a walk. It's take about 10 MINUTES just to start.
There is nothing else running (except WinXP enviroment). When I open an email, it take 20~ secs to display it. Why?
I never found Outlook so slow...
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 7/7/2010 9:58:43 PM
In my experience, Notes 8.51 is a night and day improvement over 8.5 and 8.52 is better still.
Vivek (): 8/18/2010 5:24:00 AM
I am using 8.5.1 Standard client and it looks much faster than 8.0 client.few other things to improve Notes Performance is to Compact the Workspace regularly.Change the indexing of your mail file from immediate to Hourly if that works for you.
chris (): 8/26/2010 1:21:58 PM
Full-text indexing and content searching is a MAJOR feature that needs to be more prominent in the UI. I cannot believe that I have been using this software for four years and did not even know this existed in Lotus Notes. It's embarassing, really. But neither did ANYONE I have ever talked to about it, and we are a very large company.
When you press CTRL-F on your inbox it brings up a "find" box, but that only searches the subject line and sender name (whatever you can see on the inbox screen). The actual search feature is hidden within a couple tiers of menubar, but it is there and it works very well. Even for attachments!
What it boils down to is that the UI is highly unintuitive and it has a very steep learning curve, especially for non-techie people.
And the network compression -- why isn't that just enabled by default by our IT people? At least they usually create a local replica..
All in all, this is a good guide but provides ZERO information about how to actually do any of these things. I spent 5 minutes google searching how to turn on network compression... But thanks for the guide, it's still useful.
Jakub (): 9/7/2010 7:00:00 AM
This guide while informative is ultimately useful as the previous commentor mentinoned. A better more informative approach to laying out 'how to speed up notes' would be to actually describe WHAT to do. (example: enable network compression? where and how to get to it). It is a good starting point, but not a full solution for people.
Rafał (): 10/8/2010 1:23:07 AM
Notes is not Outlook.
Can you use any application inside Outlook other than Outlook. No ?
So there is an answer. Lotus Notes is MORE than mailbox. It's system of databases/applicatin which can interact between them.
Lotus Notes power is much bigger than Outlook one.
Allan (): 10/8/2010 4:40:58 AM
The unfortunate thing is that most of them are not under the control of the normal end user at GiantBigCompany, Inc. It is sad to see the productivity loss (not only in Notes, but in all applications) due to poor hardware, unplanned software implementations, etc. Hardware refresh cycles are the bane of end user existence.
Tanveer (): 10/27/2010 12:22:05 PM
i have created local of lotus notes mails but after reaching 4196MB size whenever I tried to replicate with server disk space error occur although I have lot free spce availble on disk.
Is there any size limit on nsf file
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 10/27/2010 12:31:08 PM
There's no practical limit for most users, but it will depend on your OS, disk space, and how your administrator has configured your mail file quotas. It's also possible you have a corrupt document in the mail file. I recommend that you check with your Notes admin.
Kasun (): 1/26/2011 4:05:22 AM
I have created a lotus notes database. I tested it using Wifi and LAN. When we connect it through the VPN, It gets long time to load.I have used some data to the fields which are gathered from the views.Anybody have an idea to neglect that delay when we are using LN through VPN
torrent (http://magnetdownloads.com/): 2/17/2011 10:18:57 AM
I have made changes in the Jvm properties. Its working perfectly. If we restart the system, its taking too much time.
Sandeep (): 5/3/2011 10:58:36 PM
Is it require to enable network compression on server also?
Michael (): 5/5/2011 6:03:52 AM
One thing we found was that, during initial upgrades from R7, we selected the option for Notes to Preload files during boot up. Thought this was a great idea, but when we got a few complaints from laptop users about it taking a long time to boot and have Notes start up we tried installing without this preload option. Boot times are now faster, Notes is now faster in starting AND the installation takes almost 20 minutes less..Worth thinking about..
Michael (): 5/5/2011 6:06:29 AM
As for the person that feels Outlook is better, this is just the indoctrination kicking in. I agree that not all users require the full Notes client, but when you consider what you have with Notes compared to Outlook, the trade off is a no-brainer. We have new employees here always asking this question and after a month they see the benefits, and advantages to the Notes environment. Perfect? Heck no, but still better and easier to setup, maintain, and grow thatn anything Microsquash has ever come up with..
Anita (): 1/27/2012 7:10:35 AM
I have two users that started experiencing a 5 minute wait to open an email from a paticular vendor. However the person next to them does not have an issue. Compact & Fixup was run on user(s) system to resolve but this did not work. Would you know why this would occur? If the user forwards the email to me I'm able to open w/o issues. I even tried to open their mail DB from my desk and same response to open the email from vendor is 5 minutes. Other suggestions to try?
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 1/27/2012 9:54:23 AM
Sounds like an issue with the user's mail file. Do you know what is inside the email you are trying to open? Attachments? I suggest talking with your Lotus Notes Administrator as he's best equipped to support you. I wish I had more information to give you. - Eric
joe zink (): 5/2/2012 9:12:53 AM
Chris is exactly right: "All in all, this is a good guide but provides ZERO information about how to actually do any of these things"
Sigh. . .
Pravin P Shelake (): 7/27/2012 4:30:27 AM
TO improve Lotus Speed one has to do some settings in jvm Properties.
If anybody is interested then let me know
Dave (): 8/10/2012 12:24:59 AM
News just in - the Ford Model T is also relatively slow and unreliable.
The postal service was designed as an upgrade for Lotus Notes users.
Ash (): 8/14/2012 3:54:36 AM
Where can I find the IBM suggested reccomendations on the limits of a Notes 8.5 mail file regarding Inbox doc count, folder count etc. I need proof from IBM to implement limts on users.
an (): 11/15/2012 4:16:15 PM
maybe if notes didn't suck out of he box then you wouldn't have to do this "tuning"
raj (http://n/a): 4/4/2013 3:19:54 AM
Archiving process in Lotus Notes 8.5 is very slow then how can get more speed Archiving
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 4/4/2013 8:56:48 PM
Raj, The goal of archiving is to reduce the file sizes of the files you use most to keep them fast. Archivng speed is a function of the computer and the size of the file you are archiving. If you have a very large file with many documents, archiving could take a long time.
Dave Woolcock (): 5/23/2013 3:24:01 AM
"large file attachments will slow down your system"
Is this the case with DAOS?
Why is this the case if you don't open the attachment? Aren't the entries indexed?
I am struggling to understand why file attachments should slow you down unless you are replicating or opening the attachment.
Eric Mack (http://www.EricMackOnline.com): 5/24/2013 7:19:15 PM
I'm specifically referring to file attachments in a local replica, but the fact is the larger any file the more work the computer has to do to find anything within the file. So, a smaller file is typically a faster one.
Kent Wyatt (): 6/21/2013 2:42:06 PM
The bottom line is Lotus Notes does not run optimally from a development standpoint. No amount of system optimization is going to change this unfortunate fact.
I watched it creep on a brand new mac pro with 8 gigs of ram, an ssd drive, and virtually no other software installed. What does this say?
:)
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 6/21/2013 2:51:27 PM
Hi Kent,
Ny Notes is fast and I am using am machine with far less power than yours. Remember that Notes is built on Eclipse. If you are a developer then you may be using other development tool that mess with the Eclipse environment. That would be the first place to check. The other, obvious one, is to see that you are using a ocal replica. Best of sucess to you
Kent Wyatt (): 6/21/2013 7:14:29 PM
By fast do you mean compared to other applications or "fast for Lotus Notes"? Like I said, this was running on a top notch brand new computer with not much installed (and on a lighting fast SSD drive). I haven't touched any development tools on this machine...
The fact that we are posting after a gigantic article written about speed issues says something right? :)
I used to use Microsoft Entourage before this which I USED to think was cluncky until I had something worse to compare it to. If an application requires work-arounds and users tip-toeing around it in order to keep it running 40% slower than most other off the shelf apps... Sorry, just not a fan.
Thanks for your response
Numan (): 7/2/2013 11:02:45 PM
Set up replication? I wonder why? In this age don't you think all that should be managed seamlessly & automatically? Thats the whole point of a thick client. Why set it up explicitly? Notes performs like a "Very Thick" client but the features are those of a "thin" client. Very outdated software.
Powerful hardware? You need powerful hardware for photoshop, games, etc, etc not for email!. My ios and android devices can process mail faster than notes. Incidentally they connect to the same Domino server!
Being an IBMer, I know that IBM doesnt even have a full force of developers working on it. They are just keeping the lotus flag flying for pride.
Stanslas (): 7/2/2013 11:19:39 PM
Its fine for IBM to use their in house software for pride. What I don't understand is why sell crappy software to others? And the worst part is why are these other enterprises even buying this??
skipjack (): 8/26/2013 7:32:06 AM
I've been waiting 30 minutes for my Notes to open as I type this.
Powerful or not, staring at a repeating progress bar doesn't help me get my work done.
Outlook is far more intuitive and stable... hell, most freeware mail programs out there are more stable and intuitive!!
Discussion for this entry is now closed.