[Siva Shankar]

Hi:

Basically i am a Domino administrator.

We have blackberry running on top of R5 in Win 2000 platform.

We have decided to upgrade the

Blackberry from 4.0 to 4.1.x
Domino R5 to R7.0.2
Windows 2000 to 2003

All the upgrades on same day.

I have not played with blackberry earlier but I have given the responsibility of this task.

1) Is there anything which we need to take care particularly.

2) Which is the best way to proceed either upgrade the blackberry first and then upgrade the Domino or Vice Versa.

I was told to uninstall the existing blackberry and upgrade Domino to 7.0.2... Once that is over then do a fresh installation of blackberry 4.1.x and restore the required files from the backup so that nothing needs to be configured again.. If i go in this manner do you expect any issue and what are all the important files that needs to be restored.

We have SQL express edition running on the Blackberry server. Apart from the username and password of the SQL do i need to get anything extra.

What are the things needs to be taken care on Windows level before the upgrade of the OS.

Can you guys help me in closing out the upgrade successfully.

Thanks

[Jadey]

Crikey, that's a lot of upgrading. Personally I would advise against doing them all on the same day - it will make troubleshooting any issues much harder, as it will be more difficult to ascertain which upgrade caused the problems.

Personally, I would upgrade in the reverse order that you listed, i.e.
Windows 2000 --> 2003
Domino R5.? --> R7.0.2
BES 4.0 --> 4.1.x

When I upgraded Domino 6.5.4 to 7.0.2, I left the Bes server (full version, not express, in case that makes any difference) in place, and had no problems. However, my BES was already 4.1 by then.

I have never upgraded Windows under Domino, so can't provide too much assistance there.

Domino, again, I usually keep fairly up-to-date and have never tried a R5 to R7 upgrade. I took R5 to R6 to R7. There are some upgrade issues from R5 to R6, so they will almost definitely be there with R5 to R7. Have a look at IBM Redbooks | Lotus Notes and Domino 7 Enterprise Upgrade Best Practices

Sorry, not too much solid advice in there, except... I really would not attempt upgrading all three in one day. There are some Domino processes that only run overnight (or as per the "out of hours" specifications on the server docs) and these really should have a chance at completing (so you can find or fix errors) before BES is changed.

[Siva Shankar]

I am perfectly fine with Domino. I am ready to face the issues coming from R5 to R7 upgrade. I am mainly worried about Blackberry. Anyhow thanks for your reply. Lets wait for others feedback.

The reason why we are doing everything in single day is that...

We have a mirror drive available for C: so if anything goes wrong we can restore it back easily on windows part.

Thanks

[Aroc]

I had ghost images as well as a standby (offline) drive mirror to slam in, and I still did the staged upgrade. You're almost certain to run into one or more problems and doing each component one at a time helps to isolate the problem. I'd rather do it a little slower, fix problems as they arise, then push too far, too fast, too soon and have to revert back to an old backup. but that's just me.

RIM advised me to do a similar upgrade as Jadey.

1. Upgrade O/S
2. Upgrade Domino
3. Upgrade BES

RIM likes to see Domino upgraded before BES, even if you have to temporarily run with an older/unsupported combination (new domino / old bes). I get a feeling RIM gets uneasy when dealing with old builds of Domino. It may be a comfort factor on their part. and given that we Domino admins tend to be better/more knowledgeable on the Domino-side than the BES-side, it might do us good to head RIM's request on this one.

From me, #1 was a knife edge cut over from NT4sp6a/R5.0.7/BES2.2.6a to new hardware with the same build of Domino and BES - 2003sp2/R5.0.7/BES2.2.6a. Ran that for a few days. #2 The did an inplace upgrade of Domino to 6.5.6FP1 (was the latest at the time). Ran that for a few days. #3 Then I did an inplace upgrade to BES 4.1.4 (the latest at the time). Will probably upgrade Domino to 7.0.2FP2 in the near future, if need be.

If you have TSupport, you might call into RIM and get a different answer or suggestions from them. I don't know.

As for the upgrade to Domino R7. Except for my BES server, all of my domino servers (6 of them) were on 4.6.5 or 4.6.7(intl). IBM told me to got from 4 to 7 required a two step process, requiring me to got from 4->6.5->7.0. I don't recall if 5.0.x had that limitation (needing a 6.5.x interim upgrade first) or not. But I'd verify that with IBM Lotus.

Of course with the upgrades you'll want to make sure the Domino server service is off. ditto with the BES services and the Domino BES tasks. Then bring them up manually and check things. There's also some DB maintenace tasks/housekeeping you should do prior (plus clear out the pending Administration requests (admin4.nsf), clear out the router mail boxes (mail*.nsf), etc). It's also a good idea to audit the items in the notes.ini, since some of the settings are different or depricated in Domino R6 and R7 now.

One thing I noticed on my 5.0.7 to 6.5.6 upgrade was that Domino added a DSTLAW= setting in Notes.ini, a setting that was purported to be depricated in that version. That was odd.

[Jadey]

All sounds good in Aroc's reply.
Aroc, only reason I bumped to 7.0.2 was so that I could get the APIs on BES for the encrypted mail feature...

[Siva Shankar]

Thanks for your reply. Can you please tell me

what are all the files needs to backed on Blackberry part and also the location..if possible.
What are all the important files on SQL part.

Since I am a newbie i am asking all these things. Hope you guys help me.

I was told uninstall the blackberry and upgrade the domino from 5 --> 7 then do a fresh installation of blackberry 4.1.3 and then restore back the old blackberry configuration files from the backup. If i need to do like that what are all the files needs to be backed up and restore back after the fresh installation of blackberry.

What do you guyz suggest, fresh installation of blackberry or upgrade of blackberry from 4.0 to 4.1.3 after domino upgrade.

Thanks

[dev]

Upgrading all 3 in the same day is a very bad idea. It makes troubleshooting very difficult even if you're a guru on all 3 (OS, BES & Domino), plus the BES is high visibility and you should consider the number of users that will be affected if you have to roll back.
Both Jadey and Aroc described the best approach that should be used.
There are numerous considerations to take note of:
1. Remaining domino servers in the environment - what's their current versions (ODS strructure- R5 uses 41 & R7 uses 43)? Coexistence and interoperability are key here.
2. What anti-SPAM software is currently running on the W2K server
3. Backup software currently running on the W2K server
4. Any agents running on the domino BES server - those may potentially become disabled during the upgrade
5. Administrator client needs to be upgraded to administer the R7 server
6. Is Sametime used? If so the version (server & client) will have to upgraded to match the domino version
7. What about the hardware? Does it support the new platform?
8. What about the device models? Some have limited resources (5800 series) and would experience performance issues with the new BES version because of the extra modules that's pushed down during OTA activity.

You need to map out a clear upgrade plan for the BES and Domino which should include a roll-back strategy if things don't go according to plan. The OS is a bit more straight forward.
The strategy should be OS-->Domino-->BES, and you may have to consider a 2-step process for the domino part (R5->R6->R7).

[dev]

Blackberry files (domino server) are located in:
Lotus\Domino\Data\BES\*.*. Here is where you'll see all the BES-enabled users' state databases. You'll also need the profiles database; notes.ini.
For SQL..you need BESMgmt.mdf & ldf files. Those represent the config database.

[dev]

Livelink - Redirection

[Siva Shankar]

Thanks for your clear answers.

I am going to propose the following change.

Windows upgrade from 2000 to 2003 on Day 1
Let it run for 1 or 2 days

Then upgrade the Domino from R5 to R7 Directly or R5 --> R6--> R7
Let it run for 1 or 2 days

We have the necessary hardware requirements. I will also take the backup of the files mentioned by Dev. Then

Will upgrade the blackberry from 4.0 to 4.1.3 or 4.1.4. Here i have a question, Can i go for fresh installation of 4.1.3 by uninstalling the existing version and restore the important files from the backup or should i go for upgrade. Which one do you guyz suggest.

Thanks for your help!!!!

[Siva Shankar]

Now we are only going for Domino and BB upgrade. We have decided to upgrade domino first bcoz Blackberry 4.1.3 wont support in R5 so we will upgrade the domino and then blackberry. Since we are not touching the Operating System i think i dont need to worry much abt SQL config dbs.

[hhtop]

Have you finished the upgrade of Domino and BB?
What is your experience and what where the steps to perform the upgrade?

[newborn]

I completed the upgrade two weeks back. During the upgrade process i faced some issue with SQL db. That is related to Transaction logging size limit. The size limit was set to only 50mb. Once we changed the settings to unlimited the problem got solved. After two days of the upgrade the server has crashed once due to nbes issue. Once we applied the MR2 patch the issue was sorted out.

Regards