I am planning on donig a knife edge cut-over to migrate our BES server (4.1.4) to different hardware.

Our BES configuration DB is hosted on an SQL Server so isn't really an issue.

I had been in the process of running the BES installer until I ran into an error:

"Failed to update the values into database [mdss] as the database has been assigned to another sevrer [SERVERNAME]. Please try with the other database."

Trying to figure out the problem, I spotted a little note in the following Blackberry article:

BlackBerry Search Results

"Note: MDSS is supported only if the BlackBerry Enterprise Server name is not changed."

It had been my intention to change the BES server name from the hostname to a more generic name (BES1) so that server moves or hostname changes wouldn't have any reference to old names.

My questions are - if I uninstall the MDS service will I be able to perform a knife edge cut-over and will I be able to reinstall MDS on the new server?

I'm also quite new to BES administration and I'm not sure what impact removing the MDS service is going to have. Blackberry Manager indicates that no applications are installed so I'm guessing it won't cause a problem immediately, however, in the near future we'll be using the Bloomberg Application on the handhels and if I can't get MDS to work there'll be hell to pay!

Please clarify whether you are talking about MDS Studio (MDSS) or MDS.

MDS Services

There is no mention of "studio" anywhere.

Went through the same exact scenario as you did. Knife-edge worked perfectly except for the MDS as expected

As stated in the doc, MDS cannot be migrated over when the netbios name of the server is different. We have to create a new MDS on our SQL 2005 which is not a big deal.

After the cutover is completed, from your Blackberry Manager you will notice two instances of BES and MDS ie the old and new BES and MDS

If you use MDS you will need to repopulate your entries from the old MDS to the new MDS else all the setting will be at default.

On my Blackberry Manager the old BES and MDS are still showing. I am still trying to figure out how to properly remove the old instance of BES inspite of following article KB05264 which is for IBM Lotus Dominio and MSDE. We are on MS Exchange 2000 and SQL 2005 running BES 4.1.2

If anybody has any advise on how to properly remove the old instance of BES and MDS I would appreciate it as I can't find it anyway on this forum and from Blackberry Technical Solution Center

Thanks