What is the failure rate for a BES service pack upgrade?
 

I have the last of three major upgrades of my main BlackBerry environment this week. First, I used the knife-edge cutover process to physically move the BES 4.1.3.19 for Domino with local MSDE to another physical server in a different data center. No issues.

Next, I migrated the besmgmt database to a remote SQL server. No issues.

Finally, I need to do an in-place upgrade of the BES 4.1.3.19 (500 users) to a later version in the same codestream...probably 4.1.6.55 since that's what my test server is running.

I've read all the best practices, it worked fine on my test server that is setup the same except for the number of users, I have a ticket open with RIM just in case, and everything is backed up.

But I'm curious...what is the failure rate for service pack installations? Also are there any under-the-hood changes that I may be missing in the documentation that may impact the network?

It is very difficult to give a % figure. It also depends on what you mean by "failure".

For example, when we upgraded from SP5 to SP6, the DB upgrade did not complete successfully as it needs sysadmin rights on the DB instance and our BESadmin user only was DBO of the BESMgmt database (which is enough for running the BES, but not for upgrading).

After giving the appropriate rights, we just restarted the upgrade and all went fine. Would you consider that a "failure"?

No, I would consider that a hiccup. I think a failure is when you have to back-out of the upgrade, restore your previous environment and scramble to bring BES back up as your outage window closes.

I've been there before. Tried to do the knife-edge and MSDE to SQL break at the same time. I've learned to just do one thing at a time...carefully...

From my experience, I've read, reread, documented, and asked for procedural issues from my peers before attempting any type of change such as a SP.

Most recently, I installed an MR and my total downtime was 21 minutes with no issues.

Pulled the trigger. 57 minutes of downtime. Up and running strong. No issues. I'm back in a supported environment and can send PIN messages from the BES again!

My rollback contingency plans are sitting unused, what a heart-breaker...

Congrats, well done!