4.1 upgrade and failed Enterprise Activations
 

I'm hoping someone can help a bit with this one. We recently upgraded all of our BES servers (we have 3 in all) to 4.1. Prior to the upgrade, all of the enterprise wireless activations were working perfectly. After the upgrade however, we are seeing problems with a large number of activations. With probably 50-75% of the enterprise activations, the process fails and returns the error telling the user to contact their sys admin. We've been able to get the devices to activate via desktop synch but this totally defeats the purpose. We've been in contact with RIM and thus far, are not getting very far. For those that have upgraded to 4.1, are you seeing this as well and if so, can you offer any suggestions? I'd like to get this fixed as soon as possible as it is a royal pain in the tushy for our admins and our users...

Signed,
Frustrated..

So if you have been speaking to RIM ,what does RIM say?
Just wanted to see their angle!!

Do users get the error "Contact you System Admin" fairly quickly after attempting EA or takes about few minutes.

Is that the only error you get or does it also get stuck at Activating ...

Its very difficult to say what the problem could be from the given information-

Was anyting changed in the Exchange enviorment?
Is the same Service Account being used or a new account ?
(What were you logged on as during the upgrade)

Any other symptoms as one way calendar or messagig delays etc being reported.

HOw many users on your BES
HOw many Exchange servers,versions?
Version of ESM on BES?
Ping times to Exchange servers
VErsion of MDAC
Using MSDE or SQL

(I am just assuming its Exchange BES)

More details....
 

I actually was not the one to speak to RIM on the issue however based on the email communication I've seen, talks to a possible problem with the IT Policy on Wireless Backup feature. The users always seem to time out (15-20 minutes) during the activation process wherein they receive the "Contact your System Admin" message. Nothing was changed within our Exchange environment to my knowledge. Of the 3 BES servers we operate, they are located in 3 strategic data centers around the globe and connect to a large number of exchange servers (hence varied ping times and OS versions). We also have approximately 400+ users on each BES server. I'm not the actual person who manages the server but am accountable for the service as a whole so have alot of feelers into how everything operates so can not speak to which service account was used or versions of MDAC, MSDE and ESM....sorry! Hope that might help further...

A

Know issue with the BlackBerry Policy Service after upgrading to 4.1
 

There is a know issue with the BlackBerry Policy Service starting up after upgrading to 4.1 This is supposed to be fixed in BES 4.1 SP1 (due in Aug).

You might want to verify that this service is running. This will cause problems with wireless activations

Upgraded to 4.1 yesterday and been having loads of similar probs. In my case, restarting services (Policy Service indeed is a culprit), turning off/on the BB's wireless, and then resending the service book finally allows a user to complete an enterprise activation.

I'm still battling several other issues (such as my earlier post re. duplicate contacts and some oddities with individual BBs), but at least we've got most users finally working.

This upgrade was a total nightmare. I can't see how RIM will survive vs Windows Mobile in a few years...

Have you ever tried to upgrade any other system? Typically, poorly planned projects are the root cause of 90% of upgrade issues... Not trying to get under your skin, but this is a fact.

Did you contact your T-Support rep in preparation for this upgrade? They are really good at finding out how your current environment is set up and alerting you to any "gotchas" before you start.

totally agree with qc_metal... RIM has write few KB articles with checklists for major version upgrade, summarizing from their lengthyt installation guides for public access... hiccups usually happen because pre-requisites are not met. Try searching for "checklist" in their tech knowledge center and it will comne up a few articles...

oops, almost forget that I posted one note with checklists under "Attention: BlackBerry Enterprise Server - Useful Links" in this forum main page. Look under my post for "BES Upgrade Checklists - Fully Prepared for smooth installations".

Cheers!

No offense taken, but I'm not a novice admin. I read pages of docs and followed through all the best practices and pre-upgrade planning tests. I also contact TSupport with questions about potential issues. My configuration is as simple as possible (single BES, single Exchange box) yet this was still a nightmare and did not work at all as planned. RIM's tech docs and KB are unbelievably limited, not including tons of apparently known issues. One doc includes steps another doc doesn't. I've upgraded much bigger and more complex systems with much less trouble. A lot of it is RIM's very poor documentation (at least MS has reams of white papers and tech guides). Having TSupport walk you through the process should not be necessary if the docs were in order.

Alright, we don't need to hijack this thread. Suffice it to say, yes, others are having EA issues with the 4.1 upgrade, but you should be able to resolve them. Be strong! ;)

Bamerica - can you advise where I can find details regarding 4.1 SP1? I've done some looking around and can't seem to find it anywhere.