Rob's Blog

27/3: Foundations ready for growing your business on

Well you've probably already heard that IBM have now released Lotus Foundations Start 1.1 and Lotus Foundations Branch Office 1.1.  If not then here's a link to their press release.

But what does this mean?

Basically Lotus Foundations Start is the add-on software that you install onto the Lotus Foundations appliance that includes Domino.  The 1.1 release introduces version 8.5 of Domino (LFS1.0 was based on Domino 8.01).  The Branch Office version allows a Lotus Foundations server to become part of an existing Domino infrastructure which was a much requested feature.

How do you install the new version?

The Lotus Foundations status page automatically notifies you that an update is available for the Lotus Foundations core (i.e. the Linux operating system).  Installing these releases is simply a matter of clicking on the displayed link and then rebooting the server.  After rebooting the new software will be running.  Installing a new version of Lotus Foundations Start requires you to download the package from the IBM site and copying it onto the Foundations server.  This is a simple process documented in full here.

Once installed the Lotus Foundations status page should show Lotus Foundations 1.1 running on port 1352 as shown below.



What else is new with the 1.1 release?

Probably the biggest addition with the 1.1 release is the inclusion of VMWare Server 2.0 into the mix allowing you to install different operating systems and applications.  For example, you can now install Windows Server onto your Lotus Foundations appliance.  This allows you to run applications that only run on Windows.  An added benefit of this approach is that you can support your Windows software remotely even after a Windows crash.

Once I've had a chance to play with this new release, I'll tell you what I like and don't like about it.  At this point in time, I have no idea whether the inclusion of Domino 8.5 exposes any of the really cool features of that release like DAOS.  I'll have to run a few tests.