Has anyone experimented with the BES polling interval. The default is set to 20 seconds. I know increasing this may delay the interval a user receives email. But RIM supports has also suggested that increasing the interval results in an unsupported BES server.
If that is the case, why have have the option to increase the polling interval?
The polling interval has always been (by default) 20 secs, since way back in version 2.0 and I suspect earlier. I'm more familiar with v2.0 -> 4.0
The 20 secs interval seems to be the optimum interval that would allow the message agent to scan a user's mailbox for new mail (larger mail files take longer to scan) and redirect to the device without any noticeable delays.
Increasing the interval (less polling in a given 24hr period) would result in larger volumes of mail being redirected to the wireless network. This would cause high pending counts per user, since there's a default of 5 messages/user on the wire. Hence the reason RIM would consider this an unsupported condition.
Shorter intervals would require more CPU cycles to satisfy the polling frequency and the redirection. This condition together with the other running BES related services would degrade server performance significantly. Result....mail delays.
I don't think it's the polling interval that's the problem. Maybe your backup sw is not capable of handling "open files".
Other things to look at:
Which directory are you currently backing up? Check that you're not attempting to backup a log file that's being continuously written to.
Does any of the BES users have a significantly large mail file?
When does the backup run in realtion to the other domino tasks? - update, designer - those that run at 1:00AM, 2:00AM ...etc.
Yes that is the problem, we use TSM and it is not capeable of backing up open file. I know there is an add on component to backup the open database, but our Domino group had problems when trying to implement that component.
Other Domino task are run between 1:00Am - 5:00AM, our backup runs around 6:00 PM and take about 6 hours to complete. Our Domino team is concerned about the EXECs who's mail database are not being backed up.
I thought they could easily move all the BB users to a different mailbox which could then be backed up at an alternate time. I am not a Domino admin, but have been told that is a lot of work. We have been a Domino shop for over 12 years and the Domino admins have been around for ever and there are reasons why the backups and Domino tasks are scheduled the way they are.
I think we will have revisit the componet to backup open files once again, but are open to suggestions.
Backing up Domino databases without an open database addon is suicide(with or without BES). because
the notes database could get corrupted if a write action is taken during the backup.
(a single mail arriving in the mailbox is enough). Are they using domino transactional backup ?
Just an idea - we were having problems with our mailserver backing taking a really long time and sometimes failing out. (Veritas without the notes or open file agent) What we ended up doing was to make a new Domino server and replicate all the mail files there. Then we do a replicate once a day and after that run a backup of that server. Sort of cheesy but it works for us.
Backing up Domino databases without an open database addon is suicide(with or without BES). because
the notes database could get corrupted if a write action is taken during the backup.
(a single mail arriving in the mailbox is enough). Are they using domino transactional backup ?
Our Domino admin tell me were not using transactional backups on our production server.
then you should anyhow use either a open file agent with your backup software or do it the way MCase suggested. I can not believe that you hadn't any problems with revoery from backups in the past with that systems your running it has nothing do do with BES it is just the way domino works.
Post BES4 upgrade Notes 
