[O'dell]

First off, let me start off by saying although I am now the Admin of our BES, I am by no means an expert. Just someone who picked up the broken pieces.

That being said, the company that handles most of our IT installed BES for us a while back but since then they have not maintained anything. This is where I stepped in, and started managing users,etc. as all of that is fairly easy. Everything has always worked fine, and since nothing was broke we have never looked into "fixing" it.

However, with the 4.5 being released for the handhelds soon (hopefully) I have started looking at what we will need to do to maximize the use of all the new features, and that's when I realized we were way behind on BES updates. Currently, we're running 4.1.2.25 (4.1.2 Bundle 47 when you pulled it up in the add/remove programs more info section) and would like to go ahead and upgrade to the newest version the easiest way. Is it possible to go directly from our current version to the newest 4.1 SP5? I know new SP's typically include everything from the previous version, and hotfixes are mainly just updates, so theoretically I'm guessing this is a yes, but does anyone have an affirmitive answer to this?

Also, and this is something I'm looking to fix, when the previous installer installed BES, he put it on the same Server that runs our Exchange (2003), but he did take all of the necessary steps to make BES work when it is ran on the same machine. Is this going to pose any major issues when we do upgrade? And how easy would it be to migrate to a new machine? Could we just installed 4.1 SP5 on a new machine?

Sorry for the long post, but I always like to try and give as many details as possible instead of making you guys (or gals) dig for more info.

Thanks.

[fadmin]

Yes,in place upgrade should work with no problems . Is it best opractise? Hell,no. If your config database is on sql server it is fairly easy to do BES migration to a new server and off the exchange. Process I think would be the best is called cutover migration and if you search this forum (or RIM KB) for that will find all steps required to do that.

[fadmin]

Yes and the cdo.dll in folder system32 is the right one that needs to match version from exchange.

[fadmin]

ops... second comment was posted to wrong post.. (

[O'dell]

No worries. Thanks for the quick reply.

[O'dell]

So, from reading through everything I can either upgrade the current installation of BES and then once that's done do the cutover migration to the new machine. Or, go ahead and do the cutover migration, then upgrade.

Are there any advantages/disadvantages to either way, or is it personal preference?

Thanks.

[fadmin]

Personely I would not bother upgrading it old bes install.
Stop and set old bes services on manual.
Follow all pre-requisites prior to install of the new BES.
Logon as current BESAdmin acct.
Install new and latest version BES server 4.1.5 and point to a same sql database. Upgrade database when prompted.
Make sure Blackbery Server (not windows server name) name is the same as old one. (that is important.)
Finish install and start services and test it. At this point do not attempt to start old BES services.
Once you are sure all is good, uninstall old bes from exchange. Life is good again.

[fadmin]

Also after bes 4.1.5 install is done, installation of useless monitoring tools is optional.

[O'dell]

So, I did the upgrade and migration last night after most of our users had left for the day. All in all, everything went smooth and no complaints (so far). I did notice the attachments are handled much better with the new BES, I can actually read the PDF's I get now.


Thanks for your help.

[Jadey]

Woo!

We love it when a plan comes together.

[fadmin]

Glad it worked.
Cheers.