Hello all,

I been digging through searches for this, but couldn't really find an exact answer. I've been doing my research on this upgrade, have it planned out, and I have all of the documentation and tools I'll need. We only have 50 devices, but they all belong to execs who have been in a bit of a firing frenzy lately.

I'll be doing a parallel upgrade. Our servers are virtual so I'll be upgrading a copy of our original server's VM. The DB is on the server in an MSDE instance. So when I copied the server, the DB is now also on the copy. I know the upgrade process will install SQL2005 Express.

My concern is that when I finish the upgrade, the new server will try to immediately contact/take control of routing all of the devices in the DB. This is a concern because I want to be able to migrate a few users at a time, using the transporter, before fully migrating off the 4.1.7.

Should I, before the upgrade, delete the users on the copy? To make sure there is no potential confusion later on.

Or am I over-thinking this, and I'll just have to use the Transporter to effectively change the SRP configuration for the devices/profiles?

Going to full Full BES or BES Express?

If using transporter, you need to setup a new server and move users over to new server.

Running any apps on old BES? MDS IS is not longer supported.

Yea, sorry, full BES to full BES.

It will be a separate server.

And no, not running any apps. Just have BES and MSDE on that server.

Create a new DB on the new BES with the 5.0 installer. Then use the Transporter/Migration kit to move your folks over.
No downtime.

I know that it will ask to install SQL 2005 Express, I had planned on that. So the install won't migrate the data in the old DB (MSDE) into the new one? If that's the case, I can live with that.

I would not do that.

Start with a fresh server and a fresh DB. Then use transporter.

Well, that's actually looking like the better option now.

We recently had a failure on our current BES. One of our DCs went down, and it just so happens that it was the one that BES was associated to. Our other DCs picked up the loads, but the BES never contacted the others. Turns out the Catalog Referrals was never configured correctly. With RIM's support, we also noticed all kinds of other potential issues. So it's either hot-fix the hell out of the servers or just start fresh.

Now that I've been added as the main support contact on our contract (all other contacts are no longer here), I've been given access to our support dashboard. And with it, access to download the full BES 5.0.3 installation file. I previously could only get the upgrader file.

So yea, fresh install now...fun times ahead.

If you gonna use the same srp keep in mind that just one server can be up and connected to a rim's infrastructure at the time. If planning to move a couple of users at the time as you initially stated, to see if new bes works fine and then to move the rest of them,you'd need to stop services on old server first. This is the truth unless you got temp key from rim to perform migration. If you use bulk move using transporter tool then you should be ok.

Yes, I already have the migration kit. New SRP ID and auth key.