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Old 07-22-2008, 10:34 AM   #1
john.linden
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Question Upgrading to SP6

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I am putting together our plan to upgrade our BES from 4.1.4. to 4.1.6 this coming weekend.

We have Exchange 2k3 and the DB is SQL 2000

We have approx. 900 users on 2 servers in a BB domain. I want to get this upgrade done with the least amount of moving of user accounts as possible. I was originally going to move everyone off the "northern" server to the "southern" server, perform upgrade on northern and then reverse the process given that everything worked fine. I'm reading about the DB upgrading/backing up during the process now and wonder if I'd be better off just leaving everyone on their original server and upgrading both servers at the same time.

Any suggestions? Can anyone give me their times for how long this process took them? I have to brief my boss before I can begin (get their blessings and such), and the more I can give him the better....

Thanks!

John
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Old 07-22-2008, 01:46 PM   #2
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I would leave everyone on the same server and then do an inplace upgrade. The big thing is to make sure you get a backup of the DB before the upgrade. Also I would make sure that the services are stopped on both of your BES before you upgrade the DB that just makes sure there are no locks on the DB and that the schema can get upgraded without any issues.

If you do it late at night then most of your users will not even know it was down ;)
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Old 07-22-2008, 01:50 PM   #3
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John - We went from v4.1 SP2 to SP4. We also have E2K3, SQL 2000 and we had 7000 users across 6 BES, and another 6 DR BES. I shut all the services down, ran the createdb.cfg right on the SQL server (as opposed to just launching the SP4 upgrader and letting it go update the SQL DB). It took maybe 3-4 mins to upgrade the DB schema, then I installed SP4 on all 12 BES, then restarted the services on the 6 production BES. All in all it took me a little over an hour.
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Old 07-22-2008, 02:57 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkF View Post
John - We went from v4.1 SP2 to SP4. We also have E2K3, SQL 2000 and we had 7000 users across 6 BES, and another 6 DR BES. I shut all the services down, ran the createdb.cfg right on the SQL server (as opposed to just launching the SP4 upgrader and letting it go update the SQL DB). It took maybe 3-4 mins to upgrade the DB schema, then I installed SP4 on all 12 BES, then restarted the services on the 6 production BES. All in all it took me a little over an hour.
Thanks Mark! It's going to be a late night...I just got word that another server (totally separate from this) has to be updated and I'll probably be asked to failover our Exchange servers too. Joy!
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Old 07-22-2008, 03:00 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ashworth View Post
I would leave everyone on the same server and then do an inplace upgrade. The big thing is to make sure you get a backup of the DB before the upgrade. Also I would make sure that the services are stopped on both of your BES before you upgrade the DB that just makes sure there are no locks on the DB and that the schema can get upgraded without any issues.

If you do it late at night then most of your users will not even know it was down ;)
I hope so at least. This is for the National Guard in California and a lot is still going on with fire missions. So some will probably be down for a bit, but hopefully the majority won't ever know. That's why I'm looking for how long it's taken other people. Thanks for the advice!
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Old 07-22-2008, 09:06 PM   #6
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When I upgraded my one BES to 4.1.6 I was down for about 20 mins. 10 min for installing new bin files, 5 for reboot, and 5 for DB upgrade and starting the services.
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Old 07-23-2008, 01:44 AM   #7
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When I ran mine it took 7 minutes (about the same time it takes with every other service pack). I think considering failover for such a short amount of time could potentially cause you more problems and more could go wrong. Reality is that users can do without BlackBerry for 7 minutes.
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Old 07-24-2008, 10:27 AM   #8
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I would assume that messages will cease to queue up during the upgrade process correct?

Just something else I'll have to advise my users about...
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Old 07-24-2008, 10:39 AM   #9
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No, you will get everything afterwards. The BES will check the mailstore once its back up.
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Old 07-24-2008, 10:40 AM   #10
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Cool thanks! Even on an Enterprise Server? Where do they queue if the servers are offline?

Last edited by john.linden; 07-24-2008 at 10:52 AM.. Reason: Additional question thought of after post.
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Old 07-24-2008, 03:56 PM   #11
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One more question. Since I have two servers and will be upgrading one at a time, the setup will want to upgrade the DB the first time. I would assume that when I run it against the other server, it will see that the DB is already upgraded correct?

Should I stop the services on the first server so it's not accessing the DB while the second server is running SP?

Thanks for all the help!
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Old 07-24-2008, 04:03 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by john.linden View Post
One more question. Since I have two servers and will be upgrading one at a time, the setup will want to upgrade the DB the first time. I would assume that when I run it against the other server, it will see that the DB is already upgraded correct?

Should I stop the services on the first server so it's not accessing the DB while the second server is running SP?

Thanks for all the help!
You need to shut down BOTH of your BES at the same time to do this upgrade.
You also need to shut down any remote instances of BlackBerry Manager that might be running on an admin's workstation, as they also touch the database.

When you upgrade your first BES, it will upgrade the database schema. This can only happen successfully if there is no other BES which is actively connected to the database. (That's why you need to shut down all of your BES servers.)

Once the upgrade of BES A is complete, you can start it up again and upgrade BES B.
The upgrade of BES B will notice that the database is already upgraded and will not try to upgrade it a second time.
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