BlackBerry Enterprise Transport - Experiences ?
 

We are looking to migrate approx 2400 users from two BES 4.x servers with a common SQL 2K database to two new BES 5.x servers with a new SQL 2K5 database.

Minimizing downtime is important and I'm weighing the options of using the transporter tool in bulk mode vs moving users in groups based on our 3 IT policies.

I know that the tool will perform the transport of 5 users at once and in my testing of moving a few users, takes about 5 min for the first group of 5 to finish. Other than that, I haven't of course tested a bulk move and wanted to hear from anyone with experiences in either type. If you have any tips/suggestions or comments to add, please feel free.

Thanks,
Chris

I'd still do a phased migration ... someone else can chime in about ET

RIM recommends phased migrations. Less risk, and a comparable reward. No one that I've talked with about ET - at RIM or some of their larger deployments - plans to use or has used Bulk Mode to perform their migrations.

Bulk moves are like "Select All" in BES 4.1 Manager and moving to new BES. I had bad experiences with big moves like this in 4.0 so my PTSD from that will preclude me using bulk mode.

The threat of reactivation of handhelds is always hanging over your head with moves, so with that I feel much safer with phased approaches.

Also worth keeping in mind is that perhaps the largest use of ET, which was RIM's own internal deployment, went supposedly so good that they ended up moving from a couple hundred per day for the first 2-3 days of their pilot to 2,000 per day to close out 12,000 production migrations over two weeks. While I'd be very suspicious of their failure rate (reportedly zero, although they did not give the details on those that failed to migrate and remained active on 4.1.x and warranted follow-up work), I'd say this is certainly a reputable statement on behalf of the tool.