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Old 11-11-2005, 09:01 AM   #1
jtor
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Default Large scale rapid deployment experiences?

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Greetings to all,

Like many of the readers of this forum I am responsible for the design and implementation of my companies BlackBerry infrastructure. This has grown and changed along with the product over the last three years and we currently have over 600 users both Home office and field. We are poised for a major increase next year in which we add an additional 3000 field users in locations all around the country. The infrastructure piece I can handle. My concern is about the speed of deployment. The goal proposed by the business end of the company is 3000 Blackberry devices deployed in 16 weeks. I do not feel that this is achievable.
Has anyone reading this forum had experience with a large scale rapid BlackBerry deployment on BES 4.0 for Exchange? I would be very interested in hearing about your experiences. The best we have been able to achieve using the Management client is about 35 LAN based activations in a day. I don’t expect this type of number using Enterprise activation in the field. I’ve also found that a max of 4 simultaneous activations at one time is all a BES can handle without adverse effects on the system.

Thanks in advance for any insight you folks can provide,

JT
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Old 11-11-2005, 09:38 AM   #2
dev
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Broken down to the lowest common denominator, that 3000 users/devices in 16 wks represents less than 40 devices a day. The BES can surely handle 40 activations daily. You will however be limited to ~2000 users on a BES. That magic number was arrived at by RIM during testing on the MSDE db and not the SQL 2000 db. The MAPI connections would be a concern if the Exchange servers are remote.
To lessen the load on the BES...if you're considering 100+ activations on a daily basis....would be to disable wireles PIM sync on the activated. This way only the required service books are pulled down and mail redirection can begin immediately.The PIM data can be synced on a phased basis. Its the PIM data that causes most of the activity (slow sync process).
If the devices are new and 4.0 coded and the BES is 4.0, then EA is the best option for large scale activations.
We're planning a deployment for a client (who shall remain nameless) which borders on
~15,000 users mthly. Some details are still to be worked out (scale up requirements).
Or another option is to use the filling station approach.....have all devices shipped to your central location and activated using the handheld config tool and shipped to the users for further syncing.
Just a thought.....
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Old 11-11-2005, 02:26 PM   #3
corey@12mile
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I think the 2000 users was arrived at by the fact that you can only have so many MAPI connections at once... and not the a SQL server limitation as MSDE has the same SQL engine as SQL server, just a connection and database size limitation, as well as no enterprise tools.

The BES servers will be able to handle that. It's more a matter of whether you can handle sending out the wireless activation emails... You will want to look at a bulk import of your users too... this is all documented from RIM.

cd.


Quote:
Originally Posted by dev
Broken down to the lowest common denominator, that 3000 users/devices in 16 wks represents less than 40 devices a day. The BES can surely handle 40 activations daily. You will however be limited to ~2000 users on a BES. That magic number was arrived at by RIM during testing on the MSDE db and not the SQL 2000 db. The MAPI connections would be a concern if the Exchange servers are remote.
To lessen the load on the BES...if you're considering 100+ activations on a daily basis....would be to disable wireles PIM sync on the activated. This way only the required service books are pulled down and mail redirection can begin immediately.The PIM data can be synced on a phased basis. Its the PIM data that causes most of the activity (slow sync process).
If the devices are new and 4.0 coded and the BES is 4.0, then EA is the best option for large scale activations.
We're planning a deployment for a client (who shall remain nameless) which borders on
~15,000 users mthly. Some details are still to be worked out (scale up requirements).
Or another option is to use the filling station approach.....have all devices shipped to your central location and activated using the handheld config tool and shipped to the users for further syncing.
Just a thought.....
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Old 11-19-2005, 09:51 AM   #4
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I am interested to hear more details on the quote, "I’ve also found that a max of 4 simultaneous activations at one time is all a BES can handle without adverse effects on the system." What are these adverse affects? We have a base of 815 BB's and will be moving all to a totally new BES and AD this next year. We are currently using the Consilient middleware solution as we are an IMAP house. We are moving to a native exchange or lotus environment and will have to do a TOTAL redeploy basically. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
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Old 11-19-2005, 12:52 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by corey@12mile
I think the 2000 users was arrived at by the fact that you can only have so many MAPI connections at once... and not the a SQL server limitation as MSDE has the same SQL engine as SQL server, just a connection and database size limitation, as well as no enterprise tools.

cd.
Corey is correct. The limit is due to MAPI. Not MSDE/SQL.

Personally, I look to limit the BES to 1000-1500 users regardless of the underlying database. According to RIM, MSDE should support upwards of 1000 users but I'd switch to SQL way before that.
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