[studerje]

I want to know if I should pave my pre-production BES 5.0 MR2 server and start over with BES 5.0.1 using Exchange Web Services instead of CDO+MAPI.

Here's my situation.
We currently working on a project to migrate from Lotus Notes to Exchange.
Our Production BES is 4.x and is a Domino BES server.
Our Exchange environment (2 node Exchange 2007 CCR on Win2k8) is fully setup to include the setup of Exchange BES 5 MR2 (on Win2k8).
In our new Exchange enviroment, we do Not have public folders enabled and had to do a few work arounds to get calendar free busy and syncing to work.
I completed my testing of the BES server a few weeks back, and since then, one of our Administrators upgraded the Exchange servers to SP2. Once that upgrade happened, free busy lookup in calendaring stopped working.

I found this that states with BES 5.0.1, SP2 is now supported.
"Support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP2 CDO+MAPI
The BlackBerry Enterprise Server now supports the Microsoft Exchange Server Messaging API and Collaboration Data Objects provided by Microsoft Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2.
h t t p ://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-Enterprise-Server/Introducing-BlackBerry-Enterprise-Server-5-0-Service-Pack-1/m-p/389339"

I was thinking that I would upgrade to SP1, but then I found this in one of the docs:
---------------
Support for Microsoft® Exchange Web Services
You can configure the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to use Microsoft Exchange Web Services instead of MAPI and CDO libraries to manage calendars on BlackBerry devices. You configure support for Microsoft Exchange Web Services using the BlackBerry Enterprise Trait Tool. To configure the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to use Microsoft Exchange Web Services, your organization's environment must use Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP1 or later.
---------------

I'm thinking with all the registry changes and work arounds I had to do to get MAPI+CDO working, it might be better to pave the W2k8 machine and start over using the Exchange Web Services (EWS) option.
I did a little reading and it appears that Microsoft is going away from MAPI+CDO and the api for access to exchange ie EWS.
We just happen to be in a good position right now were I can make this change before we roll to production in Feburary.

What do you guys think?
Hope my post makes sense.
P.S. sorry for the long post.

[Harry Azol]

my initial thoughts:
keep it MAPI, I mean if you use EWS then assuming you don't have a tiny Exchange 2007 implementation (1x all in one server, vs various role separated servers) you would now be hitting multiple servers instead of just 1.

ie: if you use EWS you would be using your CAS + MB servers, whereas MAPI would be using MB only??