So I'm considering setting up my IT company's BESX on a Windows Vista box. I don't have another computer to dedicate to being a server right now, nor an extra license.

My question is less about whether this is the ideal situation and more about whether it will work?

If I install BESX on a Windows XP box do I also have to install anything else for it to be able to read the MAPI shares? Would I have to install Office 2007 or possibly this <microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E17E7F31-079A-43A9-BFF2-0A110307611E&displaylang=en> for it to be able to ready the MAPI shares.

I understand that I should still connect the Vista computer to my domain that my Exchange box resides on, and that I should still configure a BESAdmin account with all the right permissions. I also assume that I need to configure the BESAdmin account to be a Local Admin on the Vista Box as well as to be able to Log on as a Service.

Does anybody think I'm missing anything?

A little bit of background information that is probably helpful is that I'm running Exchange 2007.

Thanks!

I've successfully run 4.1 and SP2 on an XP box connecting to SBS2003. To get it working I needed to install Windows Server Admin Tools and Exchange System Manager and then do all permissions etc. I haven't tried it on vista yet.

I've only used this for about 6 simultaneous users and wouldn't push it past 10 or so in a live environment but for testing purposes etc should be ok.

I'll be suprised if the BES works...you've got two major things going against you...unsuported OS with any version of BES software; and unsupported mail platform that BES has to interact with. Not to be a bubble burster...but at least install server class OS on the box...it is called BlackBerry Enterprise SERVER...lol

The problem though is that I don't think that BES is going to work with Exchange 2007 at all in the future if you install it on the same server that Exchange is running on. It is missing the MAPI.dll and CDO (something like that) files, and it won't let you install these files onto a box that microsoft says, "is running Exchange or Office". Since I don't have any extra computers for testing to just leave sitting around, I don't see this being feasible. After all, I am just doing this as a test... BESX only gives you one CAL and that is all that I'm probably going to use, and just for testing. I finish a major project today so I'm going to give it a try.

Oh, and BTW, the reason the computer that I'm doing this with has to not have the server OS is because it is our companies extra Media Center computer that is running Windows Vista Ultimate RTM. Since it is a media computer it doesn't have Microsoft Office on it.