Daryl Hunter – Hubby, Daddy, Mentor, Friend

Whew.  We've made such good progress.  Our Blackberry Enterprise server has been upgraded to v5.0 and migrated to a new server.  This is what we've discussed so far.

Part 1– Prep Work for the migration

Part 2 – In-place upgrade of the old server

Part 3 – Cutover from OLD to NEW server

Even though we're done, and all our users are running on the new BES Server, there were some gotchas we experienced along the way.  I hope you can learn from this and maybe avoid some of the time/pain/struggle that I dealt with.  These are in no particular order.

SQL Setup
I really WANTED to use SQL 2008 x64 – I have an already-built SQL Box I wanted to use.  But, I couldn't.  It turns out that SQL 2008 is not compatible yet.  Bummer.  So, I chose to use SQL Express 2005 – a separate local named instance – for now.  I'll move databases later.

Administration Service Won't Start
This one was particularly troubling.  in Part 3, we did the cutover/install on our NEW server.  I wanted to check on a bunch of status stuff, but ran into problems. I couldn't connect to the Administration service – i just got a 404/page not found error.  This took many hours and a call to RIM Tech Support to finally solve.  It turned out to be a simple checkbox, but it led me on MANY wild goose chases.

The first thing I checked was "was the service running" – and according to services.msc, it was.  Weird.  I wonder if there was a port conflict.

I dropped to the command prompt and searched for it

• netstat -an | find ":443"

Nothing.  Weird.  What's that all about?  The service is set to use HTTPS (443) and it's running, but according to netstat, it's not running.

So, I go back to services.msc – and sure enough, the service has stopped.  Hmmm.  Why?

Well, the good news is that there are logs… they are in the "install" path… in my case, they were located in f:program filesresearch in motionblackberry enterprise server20090604" – today is June 4th, and that's the time the server was installed.  Look in there for BAS-AS log files.  Pull up the latest in "notepad" and do a search for "exception" – why?  Because this post says say 🙂

Sure enough, I have the "nested throwable" error that the forum post above talks about.  It appears to be something related to TCP/IP & Named Pipes.  So, let's open SQL Server Configuration Manager as suggested

Weird.  The TCP/IP and Named Pipes are already enabled.  That's right.  So, I disable them and restart SQL.  No change.  Then I re-enable them and restart SQL.  No change.  Hmmm.

This is when I called RIM support.  The tech walked me through a bazillion things I already did, and nothing changed.  Then he took me to the "Blackberry Server Configuration program.

See that "dynamics ports" checkbox? I specifically CHOSE to use port 1433.  I did that in Part 2 when I did the In-place upgrade.  It worked.  So, I did it again in Part 3 during the cutover install.  It didn't.  He had me check that box to look like this

Then we restarted the BES Services.  And – it worked.  What?  Weird.  Why?  He didn't know for sure.  I told him and showed him on the "old" server how that was set to port 1433.  Who knows.  It was a struggle for sure.

Address Book (contacts) missing from handheld
What?  Several of my users reported that after their handhelds resynched – after Part 3 (cutover) – their address books were missing.  That's strange.  It didn't happen to me.  Or my boss.  Or most people.  Some of the people were running Blackberry OS v4.6 – a simple "pull the battery, wait a minute, insert the battery" fixed them up.  Strange.

Some of the people were running Blackberry OS v4.3 – the battery trick didn't work.  It turns out that the Enterprise Transporter Tool doesn't support Blackberry OS v4.3 – but I don't know what that means.  I don't know if that means we have to re-activate, or if we can "slow sync" the data.  We're going to try to "slow sync" – that means, on the handheld, going to the Address Book -> Options and changing the Wireless Sync option FROM yes TO no.  Save.  Wait 30 seconds.  Then go back FROM no TO yes.  Save.  If that doesn't work, it looks like you're going to have to re-activate the phone.

Handhelds cannot surf the internet – MDS Fail?
This was weird.  Some handhelds worked.  Some did not.  If you followed along with the "Administration Service" issue above, that was part of the problem.  Since I couldn't access the administration service I couldn't check on – well – their status.  Ff you paid attention in the Part 3 install, I had to enter a CAL – I entered one for 10 clients.  The deal is that I have over 40 clients. Since not all of my users were "licensed" – some of the features weren't working.  Some were, but some were not.  Once the administration service was fixed, I was able to logon and enter the remaining CALs and activate all the rest of the users.  Within just a few minutes, I contacted the people with "surfing" issues, and sure enough, they were now able to access the Internet just fine.

Administrative users lost
After using the Enterprise Transporter tool – I lost all of my delegated administrative users.  This was strange.  I didn't notice it at first.  It wasn't until I tried to my own account, instead of the "besadmin" user account that I looked further.  Yup, sure enough, all of the delegated "Security Administrators" were gone.  It was easy.  I re-added them.  No problem.  This was probably some of the "warnings" that I ignored in Part 3 during the user migration.  Probably 🙂

I can't think of any more "gotchas" – those things above were annoying, but eventually resolved and we've gone about our business.  Maybe they are helpful for you.  Tell me if they are.