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8.0.2 Lotus Notes Relative Performance

Darren Duke  September 1 2008 03:35:00 PM
Since Lotus Notes 8.0.2 (and Lotus Domino) went gold last week, I have been busily testing and retesting the performance increases in start time and a reduced memory foot print. To say IBM Lotus have done a phenomenal job is an understatement. It is nothing short of amazing what the folks at IBM have managed to achieve.

Below is a attached HTML table of comparative values for 8.0.0, 8.0.1 and 8.0.2. Over the next few weeks I will try to add more "configurations".  For example a slightly lower spec'd laptop and a reasonable desktop running an older Athlon XP 1600+ with 1GB RAM (some of our sales people actually run on this now, and it is very, very usable) together with the Lotus Notes 8.0.x client only install.

Other things I did notice:

  • the extraction of 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 seems to take way longer than 8.0.0 did. This may have to do with the added functionality, but whatever the reason if you are installing more than a handful you probably want to extract the files first to a file share or DVD. This will also keep a ton of temporary files out of the TEMP folder on the target computers.
  • it looks like the provisioning takes place during the install of 8.0.2 and NOT the first time the client starts. This could attribute the extended install time we have seen for 8.0.2 comparable to previous 8.0.x releases.
  • notes2w.exe seems to stay in RAM a good 5-8 seconds after Notes is closed. Make sure that all processess have exited before trying a restart otherwise you will get the big, scary eclipse JVM error box (well, more the size of a screen!).
As always, these values are provided as-is and your testing may give different results. This posting is only to give the reader a relative performance indicator.

Comments

1Albert Buendia  9/2/2008 2:13:59 AM  8.0.2 Lotus Notes Relative Performance

Hi Darren,

Thanks for your excellent post. I totally agree with your Notes 8 Times Table. In fact, now you can run Notes Standart Client in machines with only 512 Mb. That was impossible mission in previous versions. This is the first Eclipse Notes client that satisfies the needs of my customers.

See you,

Albert

2Darren Duke  9/2/2008 4:51:44 AM  8.0.2 Lotus Notes Relative Performance

@Albert, I will probably add 512MB to the mix eventually. I have to admit that I don't actually think I have a computer with ony 512MB in there ;)

3Rob Axelrod  9/2/2008 1:28:06 PM  I have almost the same results

I ran my tests on an older machine with 1Gb of ram (T42 laptop). And came up with almost identical startup times (33 seconds to availability on cold start and 6 seconds on warm start including entering the password). My test box had no anti-virus and was fairly stripped of software. Next I need to try with 512 and a fully loaded image.

4David Bell  9/2/2008 6:59:42 PM  Questions

You're missing memory numbers for ntaskldr.exe in the totals which can itself use quite a lot of memory.

Also, the 8.0.2 memory number for nlnotes.exe, should that not be around 60k instead of 6k ?

5David Bell  9/2/2008 7:00:53 PM  Oops

We wish it were K :)

That should of course read:

"Also, the 8.0.2 memory number for nlnotes.exe, should that not be around 60MB instead of 6MB ?"

6Darren Duke  9/3/2008 7:30:35 PM  @ 6, maybe I’ll check

Could be a typo on my part. I'll fire up the test machine when I am in the office next.

7Nagaraja  8/27/2009 11:36:51 AM  JVM fail error in notes 8

We are getting Notes error JVM fail to start error.. Any help is appreciated