Quick question about licensing. I am planning on setting up a second server for failover. When I install BES on the second server with the same license information is my current server going to stop communicating with RIM? If it does will the new machine pick up where it left off? Just the simple act of turning the services off on one server will the other server be able to communicate with RIM? I am asking all these questions because I need to know how much downtime I will cause so I can schedule maint window with my BB users. Thanks so much in advance.

You cannot have the same SRP key running on 2 servers. The SRP key can get locked out and you will have to call RIM to release it.

Thanks for the heads up. This is exactly the info I needed.

Yup x14 is right. But you don't need to worry as you won't be starting the services during the install, you just say no to the question and start them at your leisure. Assuming you will have the DR BES point to a shared DB or knife-edge cutover to the Production BES's db in the event of failure, the SRP info is in the DB and comes over with it. It makes no odds what info you give the setup app just to get it installed.

When you want to test the DR box with the live info, just follow the steps for knife-edge cutover. But bear in mind that that while you can be back on the air in 20 mins, user downtime depends on many things and can range from 20 mins to many hours. In theory if you do this at the weekend, most won't even notice if you have a fairly small user base.

Ok, so I get the fact that the services can only be running on one box once they both have the SRP info. But I keep reading about people saying that you have to have both servers with the same server name. Is this true? I haven't read any RIM documentation that confirms this info.

Yeah it's in the RIM docs. It's not the Windows server name that matters (that can be anything) it's the BES instance name you provide when running the install. If you will use the same DB as the Prod BES you MUST have the BES instance name matching or the SRP ID will be invalid and it will ask for a new one. All that means is that you see the other BES name when you open BM, everything else is cool. Many people knife edge to new hardware then run with the old BES instance name for many years (ahem ahem) . Just make sure your other admins know that what they are looking at on the DR will be the BES instance name, not neccesarily the Windows hostname.

BES instance name? You mean the SQL Server Instance? Sorry for my ignorance, I have worked with BES before but never been asked to setup a DR box for it before.

No probs. Wait till you run the setup and all will be revealed, it asks you what the BES instance is called and here you must keep it the same as the old one (the name you see on the left hand pane in BM). Also you should probably read the knife-edge cutover docs as this is basically what you are setting up here and it mentions all of this stuff.

Is there any good documentation that you may be able to point me to that talks on the BES 5.0 HA/Failover features?

Any help is much appreciated....Thanks.

Nothing official yet on the BES 5.0 features. Likely WES 2009 should have a bunch. I'm sure there will be a session dedicated to this.