[bnickell]

Hi,
I have 2 exchange sites (exchange 2003) 1 in the UK and 1 in the US. They are on different domains. I would like to know if it would be better to have the UK set up there own BES and stay off ours. My question is do I have the UK exchange team point to my database on my BES or do I have them set up there own autonomous BES database? Or what other set up would be better? Keep in mind that the UK only makes up about 5% of our company. (25 users)

[|||||||]

What are the ping times like between the sites? Either way you should have two BES installed but the database depends on your connection. It is easier to manage if you use one DB but could give you network issues if your UK BES has to go all the way back to the states to update the database.

[Flying Dutchman]

I'm running my BES servers all from one DataCenter in North America for users in Asia as well in Europe. Especially in Asia (approx. 120 users) we are dealing with some slow VPN connections. Activations take a long time to finish but other then that it works good. One point of concern. Keep an eye on what the server threads are doing. A 4.0 the BES server assigns 40 threads (total) and will give the majority of those threads to the larger group of users no matter where these users are located on your network. Especially with slow network links, it works better if those users get more threads assigned as it takes time to scan their inboxes. First I had these Asian users spread out over all (4 BES) servers (mixed with EU and NA users) but started noticing that the server did not assign enough threads so the Asian people started complaining that Email was slow and not arriving on their BB's during certain hours. After I put all of them on one dedicated BES (120 users on 5 mailservers) things have been working excellent. I also put my European users on their own BES which works good as well (but their network is faster to begin with).

[BlackBerryLinks]

Originally Posted by bnickell

Hi,
I have 2 exchange sites (exchange 2003) 1 in the UK and 1 in the US. They are on different domains. I would like to know if it would be better to have the UK set up there own BES and stay off ours. My question is do I have the UK exchange team point to my database on my BES or do I have them set up there own autonomous BES database? Or what other set up would be better? Keep in mind that the UK only makes up about 5% of our company. (25 users)

For every Exchange organisation you need his own BES wich can not share the database.

Regards,
Bob

[wusmani]

True. You can have another database created on the same SQL server. But then the question arises, how many users are you looking at for UK? How stable is your link between the US and UK sites.

Recommendation: Install a seperate database (along with a seperate BES ofcourse) on the UK site.

BES communicates with the database for every transaction, having it in a remote location is not advisable. It would add a lot of latency, and your users would start complaining about emails being slow on the device. But again, it all depends on the number of users you plan on having in the UK.

[bnickell]

It seems that using a second BES server with its own database will work for teh UK. Thanks for all your help!