Hi all,

I have been assigned the glorious task of moving our BES 3.6 server to new hardware.

The people who originally installed the BES in my company are long gone. There is no written documentation about how the install was done.

Our setup is as follows we run BES 3.6 and we use Exchange 5.5 (still), I tried to install the new BES server on Windows 2003 OS, just to find that the Exchange 5.5 Administrator does not install on Win2k3...

Up to this point I'm reinstalling the server using Windows2000, but I'm not sure how to do the move from one server to another.

What should I do, reinstall everything from scratch BES + Cradle all the clients again? Or there is a way to move the users from one server to another????

Help please I'm desperate and Blackberry docs are truly confusing, on the manual they say you should not install Outlook on the box, and on the next page it says you can!

Thanks in advance.

Check Out the BES manual (and a myriad of great posts herein) on the process known as a 'Knife Edge Cutover' for BES. I migrated 3 servers (2 in 5.5 and 1 in 2000) and a total of 1000 users with this process. It's VERY easy once you get the basics, and there are a lot of instructions and good references here that will save you alot of time, especially WRT manually re-adding users. Trust me, once you do it you'll really be happy and it will save you alot of headaches. Just read up and prepare and do your homework. Good Luck!

Hi all,

I managed to install the new server and it is working fine, however what I wanted to avoid has happened, our users have to re-sync to continue using the blackberries on the new server...

I managed to move the users from one server to another, however once I started the server all the devices were marked as "status: (**) Initializing" and no single one could send or receive emails.

The only solution I managed to find is just to re-sync which is a pain in the ass as more than half of the users are travelling at the moment.

Does anybody have experienced the same issue before???

Thanks

Did you use the same SRP id?

Under v3.6, if you change the SRP the users must craddle and regen their encryption key.

Yes, I did use the same SRP... anyway as far as BBES official documentation is concerned, RIM says that seamless moves from one server to another are only possible on version 4...

The key here is you aren't moving the users to a new BES. You're moving the Server from one box to another.

As elkabong said I'm sure there are several well written threads here on the Knife Edge cutover. The important things are:

- Install the new BES with the same BESAdmin account and mailbox
- Use the same SRP ID
- Use the same Virtual BlackBerry Server Name
- If things look like they didn't work make sure not to Remove the Server from the MMC

One thing I remembered about the Knife-Edge Cutover. A good thing to do before you begin is to export your users and server info (via Right-Click || Export List) PRIOR to beginning the cutover. If something goes wrong, you can always just import (from the same txt file) them back into the new server once you're up and running.

Nice little backup of your user data, and saves you the task of completely restoring your old server.