Alright it's finally here after what seems like a year+ wait.

Pretty cool, annoying self signed certificate again but I'll fix that later.

Does this need to run for a day or so to get a baseline established? CPU has been hammered since I installed it (on VM at the moment for evaluation)

Does anyone have any thresholds they would recommend and monitor?

It seems the messages stay within the BMS website and don't forward to your email account ? I'm going to read more and tweak it. Nice that it has full support for Openvue etc.

How do I configure the SNMP options? I've never used SNMP before and have no idea.

Check page 17, you need the MIB to feed your system.

Also need to configure SMTP on your BES(s)

Page 17 of what? I can't find any documentation. I have SNMP installed and followed the instructions in the KB about the registry (so it is enabled on the BES). The only thing I don't know where to find is the port/community information it makes us enter.

... this product is going to generate so many support requests for RIM it is not even funny.

blech.

It would be nice if there were any support docs on their site that even mention 4.1.5.

Actually they are, have to tunnel down to you get the the Blackberry Monitor Service

1) Identify the workstaion or server you will install BMS on and write down it's IP Address Do not install BMS on your BES.
2) On each BES, go into Services-SNMP Service
3) Click on the Traps tab and add the IP Address of the machine you plan on installing BMS on to Trap destinations:. Also, write down the Community name listed as it will be used later when you add the BES to BMS.
4) Click on the Security tab and add the IP Address of the machine you plan on installing BMS on to list under 'Accept SNMP packets from these hosts.' Write any other Community name listed other than the one shown in Traps.
5) Click OK.
6) Install BMS on the workstation or server you plan to run it on.
7) Select HTTPS and type in the machine name of the workstation or server you plan to run it on. (sorry, writing this for noobs).
8) After the install, log into BMS and click on the Configuraition-Server tab.
9) Select the Version and Platform, enter the BES name, BES IP Address, leave it port 161, and enter the Community name you saw in Traps and Security.
10) Click Update. If it worked, the output will indicate so. If it didn't, try one of the other Community names listed in Traps and Security and click Update again.
11) After successful addition, you will need start the monitoring. In the Server screen on the left side it will list the server and status. To the right is the icon you use to Start and Stop the monitoring.
12) Repeat the steps for additional servers by first clicking on the New Server icon which the gray top left icon under Configured Servers.
13) I use SMTP for notifications. You will need to speak to your administrator to have the Name and IP address of the BMS added to your SMTP system.
14) To access it remotely you will use https://<BMS Name>:5089/ The certificate is annoying.

So what exactly is this?

I selected SMTP also (and it works) but I'd rather use SMS. I guess I have to have some type of device connected that is capable of sending SMS? SMTP will be quite useless for me unless I happen to be sitting at my desk, considering that with many errors the mail won't make it to the BB.

It's an interface that lets an admin monitor the BES from the web. There are many other services available but some are quite expensive and only practical if you have hundreds or thousands of users. Finally RIM put something in the bundle with BES so that we could at least get baseline functioning over the web and check to see if everything is OK.

Baseline - umm that's funny ;p

Jeff - It's going to consume a lot of CPU depending on the number of BES / users you have. It's doing a full SNMP walk every few seconds.

Did you deploy it against your whole enviornment? Cuz you guys are kinda large for the Bes Monitoring Service from what I recall.

Ahh Okay thanks for clearing that up for me. I forget at times that a lot of things mentioned on here refer to BES and I use BIS so while I don't "need" to concern myself with said items, I am one who likes to know a little bit about everything. So thanks!

Hey Jon,

Yeah it's going against 2 BES with 2000 users .. doesn't help that at the moments it's on VM and CPU has been steadily pegged around 70-90%.

The more I'm getting used to this the less it's comparable to what Boxtone can provide. it's really a reporting applet more then anything. You have to set a threshold for everything. Nice for free but as you said not much use for anyone with 500+ users and want pro-active type monitoring.

Hopefully your at WES as I'm scheduled for a Boxtone session one of the days. Still in our plans just waiting for the budget.

Jeff

The thresholds are really crap. If it only can be configured to sent out email/SMS every 5 minutes if service is down or something. One message can be really missed.

How can it be set to send SMS? I see the option but don't quite understand how it works.

I think you have to have a modem installed and hooked up on the server that your BMS is installed on to configure SMS.

Does anyone know if you can monitor the windows service's with this tool. I see the Gear icon that says service when I add one of BB servers to the bms tool but when I click on it there are no services showing in there. Do you know if you have to setup the service some place. I'm lost when it comes to configuring the Service I guess

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but where can I get the install for Blackberry Monitor Service?

BES 4.1.5
Exchange Enviro
900 Users
2 BES servers

Thanks!

It is a part of the BES 4.1 SP5 package. It is its own installer, but it is a part of the released .exe package.

Do you have to have a modem installed on the server that you have BMS installed on in order to be able to setup the sms notification

Thanks for the replys. Got it installed and using SMTP properly. Problem now is that I added both my BES servers into it. Both check green for connection and SNMP configuration. Problem is that it doesnt matter what server I select to view, it shows exactly the same information. Do I need different trap names or something? I have one server with 600 users and one with 290, but when I select either of them, it shows 290 users and 0 licenses avail when I have 30 licenses avail.

Also, the thresholds are weird (or I dont understand them correctly). My CPU is registering 9% in BMS, so I set the threshold to 85% so when it reaches that it alerts. But it alerts even when registering 9%. Am I backwards or missing a character?

Ok. I figured out the threshold part. I didnt understand them and after RTFM, I figured it out.

The part about both entries displaying the same information still throws me. Anyone help? Please?

I had this issue once myself...Check the IP ADDRESSSES of the servers again . Chances are you have added the servers incorrectly. ( very easy to do) . Check the configuration tab of the monitoring tool and verify the IP addresses from there.

LET ME KNOW

I had them entered correctly. The way I got around the duplicate information is I created 2 different SNMP communities on the 2 servers. One is bbmon001 and bbmon002. Thats how I got it going.

I do have one more question, does anyone have this monitoring an MDS only BES?