[Dodge]

A few questions about how the BES server works.

I am implementing a BES server for a company that sits within another company, at present all the blackberry users sit on a BES that is run by the parent company. We are soon to migrate all of the users over onto the new BES server.

When the migration takes place all users will also have there mail accounts migrated over onto the new systems (different exchange servers). To do this all mailboxes ( MS Exchange ) will be exported to pst and then imported onto the new server. Current plan is that the blackberry devices are killed and then added to the new bes which communicates with the new exchange servers and which have had all the date from the old exchange server imported.

Questions are – What data does the Sql database hold, a list of users but what else ? Do I need to get this exported from the existing server and then imported onto the new server for the users not to lose data.

Also is there any data that is held locally to the blackberry devices only, i.e notes sections and password holder etc

Any help would be greatly received.

[blackberry1]

Current plan is that the blackberry devices are killed and then added to the new bes which communicates with the new exchange servers and which have had all the date from the old exchange server imported

If that is the plan,you don't need the database.

In simple words the BES Database stores.. everything...

But in you case its already decided to move users to a new BES and do fresh activations...so the old database is useless.

Are users going to be moved to a new Exchange Org or its the Same Exchange Org,within the same forest?

[Dodge]

User will be moved to a new exchange org that is totally unrelated to the current exchange setup.

[richardsbd]

In the fwiw category, based upon my observations from our just-completed migration (under conditions very much like those described here) of ~90 BB7290s:

A security wipe of each device will be necessary, unless the kill command spawns that process, so as to sever the device from the previous BES IT Policy.

There is some data which resides locally on the device - saved messages; image files that have been saved to the handheld (and possibly used as standby or home screen background); profile configuration changes; Autosig text; phone history/logs; BrickBreaker score ; Password Keeper info (I expect it is local only - our users don't use it).

Since our IT Policy precludes use of Browsers and SMS, there are likely other data which would belong in the list above (history, bookmarks?).

We chose to perform a tethered backup of each handheld on an admin workstation (meant the users all had to turn the devices in with the password), and have the data available for later restore/selective restore if asked. Doing a full restore after the security wipe seemed to introduce problems with the subsequent Enterprise Activation on some handhelds (all were done OTA - over the air).

Our users email was migrated from EXCH 5.5 to EXCH 2003 in a new domain and organization. Then the BlackBerry users were removed from the old BES and added to the new BES (each BES has its own DB). Then the BBHHs were brought in for backup/wipe/re-activation (EA).

As blackberry1 said - there is no reason to try and preserve info from the old BES database afaik.

Hope this helps!