Lotus Notes Application Performance

[Timothy Briley <tlbriley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We use a single AS/400 9406-520 for our 45 person state agency. It 
has .75 of a processor? and 4 Gigs of RAM. We installed this server 
about 18 months ago and it replaced an AS/400 that we had for about 
five years, so we are not new to the AS/400 platform. It's running 
OS/400 v5r4 and Domino 7.02 CF1. It is primarily used for the Lotus 
Notes applications which we use to pretty much run our entire agency.

Shortly after we installed this AS/400, we rolled out a pretty big 
Notes application consisting of several databases. The main database 
initially started out about 1.2 Gig and 300,000 documents in size, 
with about 100 views.

Over time, the size of the main database has grown to 1.6 Gig and 
400,000 with 114 views. But performance has really taken a hit in the 
main database with many of the views taking 15 to 30 seconds to open 
on a bad day and the main document taking another 30 seconds to open. 
A bad day happens when about 40 users hit this Notes application.

Since we are under a maintenance contract, we've been working with 
IBM to determine what to do to improve performance. They have been 
unable to help in a meaningful way.

I have my own ideas about what might help:
Add more RAM to the AS/400, especially since 4 Gig doesn't seem to be 
very much at all to me.
Increase the processor count from .75 (seriously, does the current 
figure of .75 make sense to you?)
Increase the RAM on the PC's running the Notes clients from 512 Meg to 2 Gig.
Re-architect the main Notes database into two smaller databases.
Replace Notes views with reports where practical.

But I thought that I'd ask all of you:

If you run a Domino server on your AS/400 and have had performance 
issues, what gave you more bang for the buck in improving performance?

Timothy Briley
tlbriley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
850 273-1433 cell