[SteveA]

We are in a virtualized environment and I was planning to install a BES 5.0 and SQL server, plus standbys of each and a witness server. There will likely be 100-150 users in all.

Is anyone using the Fault Tolerance features in their vSphere environment? I have the VMWare whitepaper discussing FT with BES 4.1.6. Why not apply the same to BES 5 and possibly save on the additional OS licenses?

Thoughts and opinions please - thanks!!

[besadmin23]

Opinion: That's WAY overkill for 150 users. At least the SQL mirroring with a witness is imo.

Is your VM environment on one physical box or multiple with shared storage? I'm guessing multiple with shared storage based on your FT comment??

FT of vmware would probably be fine for a BES with that few users on it. Honestly, you could do SQL Express local on the VM and then just take snapshots daily to be more than covered.

Now, all that is said assuming you can sustain a small bit of downtime in the event there is a prob. If you can't afford ANY downtime, then knock yourself out. You'll have the badest a$$ 150 user BES setup in the land. I like the enthusiasm!!

[SteveA]

Thanks for the response. We have few users, but they are quite mighty and demand a lot. One BES supporting multiple offices companies, times zones, etc. It's tricky when we need to perform maintenance. I was running 4.1.7 on MSDE and changed to a remote SQL VM, which is dedicated to the BES only.

Ideally, I would like to have two BES hosts - one in Toronto and one in Montreal - both primary. Then have a SQL database, perhaps in Toronto, where both hosts would connect to and keep the mirrored database in Montreal. My WAN connection is good and my pings are 10ms. Not sure what the ideal thresholds are or if others are doing something similar.

The goal is have little to no downtime without spending $$$ on some of the great 3rd party products offered by RIM partners.

[CanuckBB]

For hat few users, I'd just use vSphere HA. If a host goes down, the VMs will restart on another host within 5-10 minutes. Most users will never notice that. If you have 2 datacentres, then SRM will cover a total datacentre failure.