My company group has 2 email systems: Lotus Domino & Microsoft Exchange.
Due to certain internal issue, these 2 email systems are running in two separate building and cannot be merged.

If we are to buy one BES server and put it beside Lotus Domino mail server, is there any workaround in order to push mails for both Lotus Domino & Microsoft Exchange?

Can we install BES for Lotus Domino & BES for Microsoft Exchange on the same BES server?

I am being challenged by my boss why we cannot use only one BES server.

Last but not least, pls excuse my limited knowledge.

Rgds,
Blake

This was answered about four threads below

bes-admin...mail-domino-exchange-systems.html

Each mail system requires it's own BES

Welcome to the forums blake. As David said, this is not possible. We run GroupWise and Exchange where I work, I have to support both BES Servers (one for each mail platform).

Hi David & jsconyers:

Thank you very much for the confirmation.
However my boss does not accept the answer 'NO' easily. I need to elaborate the reason for him. Hence the following questions:

This is the limitation of RIM software, or rather imposed by RIM BES software which cannot be technically overcomed, right?

Greatly appreciate it if you can provide slightly more technical details.

Pls do not be pissed off by my shallow questions.
Once again, thanks alot.

Correct, it is a technical limit.

Domino, Exchange and GroupWise all have independent and fundamentally different architectures. Domino has no idea about message containers and so on, and Exchange has no idea of NSF mailfiles.

As such, Rim have three "versions" of BES - Domino/Exchange/GW. Each version is built specifically to work with a messaging system architecture.

There is simply NO technical way to make a Domino BES talk to Exchange. The systems just would not understand each other, and all you would get were errors.

Hi Jadey:

Can we install BES for Domino & BES for Exchange on the same BES server, to overcome?

The reason I am asking this is in order to save cost by buying only one physical machine.

The BES software is designed work specifically with each mail platforms protocols. So Exchange uses MAPI, GroupWise uses Trusted Application Key and Domino uses RPC I think.

So each BES install has to work with one of those specifically as it cannot connect to multiple mail servers utilizing different methods.

Also, GroupWise BES allows you to select which address book you want to wirelessly sync, I know that BES for Exchange can't do this and I'm 100% sure about Domino but I don't it can.

That is why BES for Exchange needs the Exchange System Manager so it can use the MAPI subsystem to communicate with the Exchange server. It then in turn would need to communicate over RPC to a Domino Server, the BES hardware requirements would then increase as the work load would be quite high.

The little quirks between each platform would make the BES harder to manage, troubleshoot and implement. RIM wouldn't survive if they tried it this way.

I hope this helps explain things better.

Possibly if you used something like VMware. AFAIK you could not just install 2 versions of BES on to the same physical windows server without some form of virtualisation (the 2 BES servers would really interfere with each other, and I'm not sure you'd even be able to get them to install.)

No, only one BES install per machine. That wouldn't work if you tried. You'll either get an error or overwrite the current install.

Jadey explained it nicely as well, too many factors between platforms.

You could have a VM installed with 2 virtual machines running. That way you have one physical server but you can multiple virtual machines running.

That's the best idea I can think of. But it would need to be a powerful machine though. Possibly 3GB of RAM and dual core cpu for sure.

Hi guys:

Thanks alot for the infor.
You guys and this forum are superb.

Only one BES per platform. Like Jadey, Gibson, and the others above have mentioned, it will cause a lot of conflict and I am sure there are ways to make it work (hack your way through it) but you will be creating your own monster, supporting it, and eventually rebuilding it.

In conclusion, keep bes separate for domino, exchange, and gw

Blake,

How many users would be attached in total to the 2 BES?

The number of users would possibly negate the VMWare solution. Unless they went and purchased ESX and then created VMs on top of that, you'd lose a lot of resources from the box because of all of the Windows junk mucking up the performance.