A Beautiful Domino Environment

It is an incredible treasure trove of applications, planning, architecture and user attention that we all wish our companies would provide.

A true work of art, this is the environment I want to show everyone and be proud of that I was the admin, if I had built it. These days we rarely get to extend environments like the early days. Change management, mergers, fiefdoms, lack of training/knowledge and just fear of the unknown prevent us from helping customers sometimes.

Dozens of servers, dozens of application directories on each server, you name it they used it or tried it, sandbox apps, nifty 50, OpenNTF templates, apps even I have never seen used in the wild, and I have seen a lot, and have discs of misc. templates from books long gone to history.

Except, it is The Titanic of Domino environments.

The framework is all there, the structure too, sure it lost all the servers along the way as consolidation brought it to this point of life. It has been unearthed, by me, because it needs to get moved to a new physical server. The effort is not lost on me and I am in awe as I open apps that ran the IT department, handled changes and ID files and looks like a well maintained and curated environment with IT people that documented everything.

It is pure and regal just like it was when it ran this Enterprise's world. How would it have known that a merger or two would cause leaks in the infrastructure and the leadership to lose faith in the abilities to keep them running..

It could still get up and run today, bring everyone back, there is life here! I shouted in my head. But all I could do is be a voyeur and help it move to what may be the final resting place.

After all how long do they need this data?

Why would they no longer leverage these applications?

Sadly, it is not coming back to see the light of day, having been put down a few years ago and now sits as a read only backup documentation server.

Like the underwater footage of the Titanic where chandeliers, art, gold, dishes and windows live on and we can relive their beauty, so I sat in my remote desktop just amazed at the art in front of me that will never see the light of live data usage again.

So much awesomeness, so much sadness.