HCL Collaboration - Linux usage survey

As you probably know centOS 8.x it's now in end of life and the only "free" distro on the market right now supported by HCL software is centOS 7.x.

Domino 12.0.1 has made an exception adding to his system requirements the concept of  equivalent OS with RHEL or centOS , but with other products nothin has changed yet.

HCL has opened an anonymous survey to know and understand how collaboration admin are using their Linux servers.

https://hclsw.co/linux-usage-survey

please consider to spend 3 minutes filling that survey so probably we could have some alternative officially supported soon like Alma Linux , Rocky Linux or OpenSUSE Leap 15.4.

HCL Connections 7.0 Cumulative Fix : December 2021 cfix has been released

Some days ago, HCL has released the new cumulative fix for HCL Connections 7.0 , with the following build  IC7.0_Integration_20211122-1915.

The fix introduced in this cfix are all written as usual  , in this technote..

This kind of fix-pack are cumulative, so you could always install the last one, the only pre requisite is the HCL Connections V7.0 Update Wizard (2104).

Right now , I'm still in holidays so I 'vent updated any system but , in case of issue during the silent setup of this cfix , I read an interesting thread on the connections forum here ..

HCL Digital experience : database-transfer ConfigEngine process ending prematurely in Kubernetes Environments read this to fix it

We are living the hard days before the end year holidays. 

Between 2 HCL Connections go-live, log4j issue and some more crazy things I'm also working on my first HCL Digital experience ( Formerly Known As WebSphere Portal )  9.5 CF199 deployment for a customer in Kubernetes.

The deployment part was super smooth and in some minutes we was up and running, after the Kubernetes setup and the helm deployment.. and now ? 

Nothing relevant reading the official documentation so , I was starting with cwprofile to transfer databases and security to db2 and the customer ldap and here start the pain.

Following the default deployment in a Kubernetes environment the portal, cwprofile and the WebSphere console are deployed as default behind an ambassador service used for ingress on port 80 and 443 but, after I have started the db-transfer migration and reached the restart step , the wizard became unresponsive and the process failed.

After some research and the community help  I finally found this technote with the solution:  if you like to have your cwprofile able to survive while the portal was restarted , you needs to modify the default value about the liviness Probe as below:

core:

# Liveness probe using the application shell based probe

livenessProbe:

exec:

# Command here is ignored and replaced with calculated value

command:

- ""

failureThreshold: 120

initialDelaySeconds: 0

periodSeconds: 60

successThreshold: 1

timeoutSeconds: 10

# Readiness probe using the application shell based probe

readinessProbe:

exec:

# Command here is ignored and replaced with calculated value

command:

- ""

failureThreshold: 120

initialDelaySeconds: 0

periodSeconds: 60

successThreshold: 1

timeoutSeconds: 10

Nothing hard but , as holidays gift I wish HCL will be able to write this technote , as standard procedure  inside the official documentation or at least to link the technote there, in the appropriate section.

I wrote this blogpost to try to help the next admin , on the first ride, with HCL DX and Kubernetes.

This will be probably my last blogpost for the 2021, so happy holidays and see you in 2022 !! 

HCL Ambassadors Class of 2022

Yesterday HCL has announced the new Ambassador class of 2022 and I'm still on the list !! 

Thanks HCL !

I was really happy and honored to be again on the list , but I cannot be there without my work and my community contribution so I need to thanks:

• Factor-y that allowed me to work on interesting projects again this year. Congrats to Daniele for his confirm as Ambassador too !
• LetsConnect team , that permit me to contribute actively to our community. Congrats to Jan, Maria and Wannes for their confirm as Ambassadors 2022 !

To have more info about HCL Ambassadors program please see the nice video below , from Tim Clark , HCL program manager worldwide of the Ambassador program .

HCL Collaboration Vs CVE-2021-44228 : Security Advisory

As you probably know at the end of the previous week a huge log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) has been discovered.

HCL has published a technote about it where it's publishing a dedicated page for every collaboration products after vulnerability test has been made, and the situation is not so bad.

Please go to the technote page , follow the link to your products , and see if any mitigation has been required.

HCL Connections 7.0 has now the support for db2 11.5.6

During last month we have started some Connections update project and one of my concern was db2 11.1 will be put in EOL soon by IBM.

From time to time , I usually check the system requirement page (now updated 3 days ago) and now I've realized that IBM db2 support has been extended to 11.5.6 .  

Also WebSphere 8.5.5 Fp20 is supported.

I'm not usually pay much attention on windows part but I can see Windows 2019 is also there for Connections 7.0 (I'm not sure when it was added because we are usually on linux ).

This is are good news, thanks HCL

HCL Notes and Domino 12.0.1 - Why You Need to Be on the Latest Version of Domino - webinar

HCL Notes and Domino 12.0.1 will be released very soon during this month.

HCL has announced a super interesting webinar scheduled for  Wed, Dec 15, 2021 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CET

where the new features like

• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
• expanded language support
• improved client UI
• updates for easy meetings integrations
• IDN for international character support

and more, will be presented !

You could find the webinar registration page following this link.