Migration of BES, doesn't work

[stich86]

Hi guys,

i've recently done a migration with RIM support about the DB of older BES machine to a new one..

The BES seems ok, it reads the DB with all users, but i doesn't delivery nothing to the devices (policy, mails and others..)

RIM support tells me that isn't a problem of BES, but can be a problem of the exchange server (in my case zimbra).

There is something in the mailbox (and unique ID) of all users that connect it to the old BES server?

Thanks

[alee]

Originally Posted by stich86

Hi guys,

i've recently done a migration with RIM support about the DB of older BES machine to a new one..

The BES seems ok, it reads the DB with all users, but i doesn't delivery nothing to the devices (policy, mails and others..)

RIM support tells me that isn't a problem of BES, but can be a problem of the exchange server (in my case zimbra).

There is something in the mailbox (and unique ID) of all users that connect it to the old BES server?

Thanks

i'm a bit unclear of what you were doing. did you entirely migrate a the bes config data from one db to another (i.e. migrating from msde to sql server?) or were you doing something else.
if you were just upgrading your database and migrating all of the old bes data, it should work. if it was something else, i'd have to know what you were trying to do first.

thanks
--Tony

[stich86]

Originally Posted by alee

i'm a bit unclear of what you were doing. did you entirely migrate a the bes config data from one db to another (i.e. migrating from msde to sql server?) or were you doing something else.
if you were just upgrading your database and migrating all of the old bes data, it should work. if it was something else, i'd have to know what you were trying to do first.

thanks
--Tony

i've setuped a new machine and migrated the old BES db to this new one..
the BES recognize the users and DB, but when i switched to the new machine all users go to "inizialiting"..

The BES support tells me that isn't a BES fault, but can be a problem with Zimbra (that is unsupported from them..)

i don't know what to do, i cannot restart everything from scratch

[y@w]

Can you tell us what RIM had you do to migrate the BES?

Anything interesting in the BES logs?

[stich86]

Originally Posted by y@w

Can you tell us what RIM had you do to migrate the BES?

Anything interesting in the BES logs?

I've done the follow step:

1- Use on the old BES server the command BlackBerryBackupDB.exe that create a BESMgmt database..
2- Installed a new copy of BES on new server
3- Let BES to create a empty BESMgmt DB, after it does, click on the back button and restore the old DB with the command BlackBerryRestore DB.exe
4- Click on the next button on the DB creation window, and we got the SRP, Auth-key and CAL-key of the old DB
5- Finish installation without starting services

after all, i've stopped all the services on the old BES server, started in the new one (where the bes manager contains all the users of old BES), but after a couple of minute all users goes to "Inizializating"

the logs reports that all is ok, and seems that one user get a dispatched mail (that's false..)

[y@w]

Well.. whether or not this is causing the error you're seeing or not.. my guess is you'll need to bring over the zbd files that the Zimbra BES connector creates. By default they're in the same spot as the default Outlook zbd/pst files go for that user.

Has anyone else migrated their BES to new hardware?

[alee]

Originally Posted by y@w

Well.. whether or not this is causing the error you're seeing or not.. my guess is you'll need to bring over the zbd files that the Zimbra BES connector creates. By default they're in the same spot as the default Outlook zbd/pst files go for that user.

Has anyone else migrated their BES to new hardware?

ZCB has a local cache of mailbox data in the .zdb files. This would include BES metadata that is required for it to remember the "state" of the messages on the device.

We don't currently support creating a mail profile on another machine and just pointing it to an old zdb file so you are going to have to delete and re-add all the users and have them reprovision their devices.

[y@w]

So, is that something you have to do with BES hooked to Exchange as well, or is that a limitation of the Zimbra implementation thus far?

[alee]

Originally Posted by y@w

So, is that something you have to do with BES hooked to Exchange as well, or is that a limitation of the Zimbra implementation thus far?

that would be a current limitation due to ZCB. we have an offline cache of server data on BES to minimize load on ZCS because after the initial sync, only deltas are synced to BES. the unfortunate side effect of this is that the BES meta data will stay local to that box and is not synced to ZCS because we only sync with supported data types as defined by the server. there is a bug open to sync "other" types as blobs and we could use this mechanism to sync BES metadata in the future.

BES against Exchange will work using an online profile so all the data (including BES metadata) will reside on the server...so when you recreate the profile on the new machine, all the data will be available on the new machine. the side effect of this is that there is more load on the server because you, potentially, hit the server for every mailbox related request for all users in BES instead of a local cache.

[stich86]

Originally Posted by alee

that would be a current limitation due to ZCB. we have an offline cache of server data on BES to minimize load on ZCS because after the initial sync, only deltas are synced to BES. the unfortunate side effect of this is that the BES meta data will stay local to that box and is not synced to ZCS because we only sync with supported data types as defined by the server. there is a bug open to sync "other" types as blobs and we could use this mechanism to sync BES metadata in the future.

BES against Exchange will work using an online profile so all the data (including BES metadata) will reside on the server...so when you recreate the profile on the new machine, all the data will be available on the new machine. the side effect of this is that there is more load on the server because you, potentially, hit the server for every mailbox related request for all users in BES instead of a local cache.

so.. i've to re-provisioning all 20 users?!?
that's no so good for my boss... i hope that there isn't necessity to do a wipe, because the BES db is the same, so the IT Policy may be the same..