I have been assigned the task of setting up a redundant BES server for my company. The new server would be located at our DR site. However in the event of a disaster both our BES and mail server would change. Our redundant mail server is running Exchange 2003 running real time replication from our primary site.

1. In an event of a disaster how would the redundant BES server know the name of the new mail server?

2. Can this be accomplished using the knife-edge cutover from blackberry enterprise server 4.1?

Thanks

Iam not sure, but since the knife-edge process uses the same Virtual BES name + SRP's etc as the live server, it will have the users servers mapped to the production exchange server.

Now if you exchange didnt die then it would work as the exchaneg server name isthe same, but since exchange failed as well, then I would say that in order for BES to know that the exchange server name has changed it would need to change the exchaneg server name.

I havent tried it but Iam guessing as I just have a DR setup using the knife-edge process. I would look at the possibly exporting the user list from prod server, modifying and changing the servername to failover exchange and reinmporting and then starting bes.

This is one of Blackberry's downsides. It has no usuable or useful DR options. It's a very manual and labourious thing to have to do in the event of a DR situation.
However if you do manage to find a working solution somehow, i'd be very interested to hear about it.

Many thanks

Thanks guys,

However is there a script I can run on the BES server that would allow me to change the mail server name in an event of a disaster?

I would like to hear what others setup is in case of a disaster.

Thanks.

Why not investigate an automated solution such as NeverFail for Blackberry. Details of it can be found here http://www.neverfailgroup.com

xosoft has a solution for blackberry using their wansyncHA product which also is really good for exchange DR.

http://www.xosoft.com/