Kalechi Designs

Lotus Foundation

Lotus Foundations™, a highly secure and reliable operating system, is built on a strong foundation of Linux, and includes self-healing and self-managing properties. Leveraging unique technologies, Lotus Foundations offers extremely reliable disaster recovery, network security, data backup and protection of electronic communication. It can be purchased as software only or as an appliance. The Mark 1 & 2 servers have features that no other server has, the OS is in flash and it takes one button to backup or restore a drive.

Data Backup: Integral to the operating system is the intelligent disk backup (idb) system, a patented disk-based technology ensuring safe and reliable data backup. Key features include:

• Fast restore
• Highly reliable, hot-swappable disk technology
• Intelligent management of stored data
• Frequent incremental backups (as often as every 15mins)
• Advanced software RAID redundancy system: ability to run RAID 1 or RAID 5 simultaneously with idb backups, providing additional redundancy
• Onsite and offsite encrypted data backup options

Disaster Recovery: The OS includes an advanced disaster recovery technology, SystemER (emergency recovery). This enables Lotus Foundations-powered servers to be recovered from any type of system failure into a fully functional state in two minutes, allowing your server to be up and running while the rest of the data is restored. Full recovery from improper shutdowns, the small footprint of Lotus Foundations, and idb technology make SystemER two-minute disaster recovery possible.

Emergency Mode: The OS has a small footprint - about 50 to 100 times smaller than the operating systems used in other products with similar features. Because it is so small, the operating system and configuration files - in fact, two copies of them – can be stored on a non-volatile solid-state disk. This disk has no moving parts, so it is very unlikely to fail. The only files stored on the normal hard disk are user files, and these files can all be safely backed up to protect against hardware failure.

Incredibly, during a hard disk failure, a Lotus Foundations-powered server continues to run as a LAN-to-Internet and firewall device without any service interruption. To recover the rest of the system, simply insert a new, blank hard drive and restore your files.

Proactive Self-Healing and Self-Management: Using the built-in NetIntelligence (autonomics), Lotus Foundations has the ability to automatically detect and evade malicious external attacks such as a ping of death and other denial of service attacks. NetIntelligence also protects the Lotus Foundations operating system from being modified or corrupted by malicious foreign programs and files.

• Self-healing: detecting, diagnosing and repairing problems
• Self-managing: adjusting itself according to workload demands
• Self-configuring: intelligent network discovery and automatic configuration of new components
• Self-protecting: anticipating and defending against security breaches

Network Security
Lotus Foundations is an autonomic system that “knows and protects itself,” and has detailed knowledge of its network surroundings. Lotus Foundations automatically identifies and protects itself against various types of network attacks to maintain overall network and system security.

Firewall:
Lotus Foundations includes a state-of-the-art auto-configuring firewall that requires no setup and offers protection from net hackers and other intruders.

• Lotus Foundations firewall is completely automatic - you don't need to configure any special options, and your whole network is protected instantly
• Allows you to quickly and easily modify/edit user accounts as well as lock down select users
• Includes several network infrastructure services (DNS, DHCP, LDAP)

Access Control, Authentication and Password Management:

• All user accounts have unique passwords requiring compliance with the Lotus Foundations password policy
• ACLs provide enhanced modes for data access and permissions, including read/write controls

AntiVirus and AntiSpam Protection: Leveraging the award-winning Kaspersky® antivirus engine, Lotus Foundations AntiVirus protects both your network and email from viruses, worms, email worms, trojans and other malicious programs that could seriously harm your network.

• Lotus Foundations AntiVirus is tightly integrated with the Lotus Foundations server operating system and resides on the server instead of your users' personal computers, thereby stopping viruses before ever reaching individual users on the network
• Lotus Foundations AntiSpam, also tightly integrated with the Lotus Foundations server, uses the award winning Vircom® engine and automatically stops malicious spam, preventing it from bringing down your network

Email and Office Productivity Tools - Get Productive and Stay Connected
One of the keys to business success is to empower employees, trading partners and customers to connect to each other and communicate effectively in the context of their day-to-day interactions. Lotus Foundations Start comes complete with email and calendaring functionality as well as office productivity tools that will enable users to work on documents, presentations and spreadsheets across a variety of formats. The eMail client includes todo, contacts, calendar and group calendar. With just a click you can schedule meetings, assign tasks or communicate with your employees. There is no need to purchase additional software. And there is no worry that your user experience will change as Lotus Foundations supports a variety of file formats and email clients. You are free to work how you know best.

You can now run enterprise type Lotus Domino applications with out the enterprise price.


For an excellent article on IBM Lotus Notes see CIO.