Blackberry & SBS 2003 Installation 2

[TechCarnivore]

Hi Gang,
I have a customer interested in mobile devices and while I'm a Windows Mobile guy they have their eyes focused on Blackberry phones. They're running SBS 2003 R1 Standard w/SP2. Are there any issues I should be aware of? I'm looking through the Blackberry website but have not yet found a solid answer.

 

[58sniper]

Depends on how they want to do it. If they're going to use BES Express, which supports up to 15 users, running that on the SBS shouldn't be an issue (assuming 4GB of RAM and properly configured).

If, on the other hand, they want to scale higher, I'd recommend BES on a separate box.

BES hits Exchange for much higher resource levels than Windows Mobile devices do.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[ShackDaddy]

BES Express isn't being sold anymore. Now it's BES Small Business Edition or something like that.

You should make sure you follow the setup instructions for BES, and the important thing is creating the BESAdmin user account, assigning it rights, and making sure you are logged on as that account throughout nearly all your BES configuration, including after reboots. If you forget and log on as Admin after a reboot, you may do some things that will cause BES to not work properly.

Follow these guidelines for some SBS-specific stuff:

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/articles/113/KB13242_f.SAL_Public.html

The main weird stuff you'll run into will be the need to create a unique MSDE instance for BES. You can't just run the MSDE setup, you'll need to know how to run the setup from the command-line with some arguments. It might look like this:

setup.exe INSTANCENAME="BES" SECURITYMODE=SQL SAPWD="$ecur3P@$$w0rd"

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[twwabw]

BES Express was never sold- it's free, and still available. I have BES Express running at about 7 client sites, including my own company office (which yes- it's running on SBS). Guys- you have some real misconceptions about BES. For starters,yes- it's free, for the first device in your organization. After that, you need to buy CALs for each additional user/device, at a cost of about $100 each, up to the allowed max of 15 users. Beyond that number, you will need to purchase full-blown BES SBE, or BES for the enterprise. When orderingCALs for Express, you need to be sure to order the Small Bus Edition CALs, as the std. BES cals will not work.

BES can run on SBS, but IMO you should not. Too much interference and security issues between the BESAdmin account you must create, and local account permission requirements, which are not a good thing on SBS as it is your DC. You can do it, but it is a much more involved process than running it on a separate box.
But if you decide to, head over to blackberryforums.com and learn how to do it right, if you insist. I run it n my office, as I am the only BB user on the server, and my Exch. organization is small, as are my server requirements.

Not to fret though- BES Express can run on XP Pro- you do not need to purchase a server with a server OS. There really isn't a ton of overhead with it, and it will run happily on any decent P4 with a Gig of ram or better. Your problem with setting it up on anything when you use SBS is setting up the Exchange tools using the SBS media. You need stand-alone Exchange media to set this up, and your SBS media will not let you do this. There are ways around that too, as the biggest point in creating the Exch tools install is the creation of the MAPI profile, with Exch admin permissions carried over from your BESAdmin account settings. Not impossible, as you can accomplish this with install of Outlook 2003 from your SBS Client Apps, and setting the profile to the BESAdmin account.

You do not need to worry about setting up the MSDE instance from the command line- the install will create the instance for you- completely automated. No intervention necessary.

While it is true you should always manage the BES logged on as the BESAdmin account, you certainly can log onto it as any domain account you wish for other purposes. But when opening the BES Manager, or performing anything related to BES or BES setup, always only use the BESAdmin account. And these are services, not start-up items, so it is irrelevant whether you log onto it as BESAdmin after a reboot. If that's necessary on your setup- you did something wrong.

It's a great tool and brings a lot of simplification to the system admin for managing these devices, vs. having them run desktop redirectors, etc. Complete central control and administration- the users never need to plug the device into their desktops- ever. My only other suggestion is that it is much easier and quicker for you to set the devices up tethered to the BES server than over the air. OTA works, but takes a lot longer, and requires intervention from the user with the device. That can get a little flaky considering they've probably never touched one before, and you have to hand-hold them through the whole process. We always just make sure the device gets delivered to the client office instead of the end user, we provision it, and then ship the new toy out to the user all ready to go.

 

[ShackDaddy]

The free BES Express was unavailable last month for a few days when I went to look for it, but it's back now. I've installed BES on five SBS servers and it runs well on all of them. Five users is the most I have running on a single server.

Interesting idea about setting it up on XP Pro. Didn't know you can do that.

If you are setting BES up on a workstation you don't need to know about MSDE command-line, but if you are setting it up on your SBS box, you do.

My point about logging in as BESAdmin was that you want to always be logged on with that account during the setup process, not necessarily forever afterward. Once you have the service accounts properly configured, you don't need to do much, and would usually only log in as BESAdmin when you need to provision a new device.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[mofusjtf]

Does your customer use PUblic Folders? That might be one thing to consider since no BES version supports synchronization of Exchange Public Folders.

Also, blackberry phones support Activesync. I'm not quite sure if it works with Acticesync on Exchange but I know it works on ActiceSync on the desktop. Just something to explore. I would certainly be interested to know if Blackberry devices can use Activesync with Exchange.

If you need to synchronize public folders Goodlink is an option or Add2Exchange.

If you're worried about server performance you can always use the hosted solution from Blackberry.

 

[TechCarnivore]

When trying to create the MSDE instance the installation continues to roll back. Time and Time again.
No error messages.
My command looks like this:

setup INSTANCENAME=BESMgmt SAPWD=”AStrongSAPwd” /L*v C:\MSDELog.log


Any other ideas?