[ClevelandITGuy]

Hi all,

Got a few questions to bounce off everyone before I start rippin' stuff out and take down my network...

The previous network admin installed BES (v4 at the time) on our sole Exchange2K3 box, and it's worked successfully for many years. Currently BES is at 5.0.3.3.

I have since taken over, and have upgraded our infrastructure, installing a Server08R2 box running Hyper-V, and have Exchange2010 as one of the Vm's. I've moved everyone over to the E2010 box, changed the MAPI profile in the BB Server Configuration utility...I've even gone as far as configuring E2010 and BES (which is still on the old E2K3 box) to communicate using EWS, as opposed to CDO...but here's my dilema. I'm ready to uninstall E2K3 from the old box, and leave BES running on it, however, I was attempting to see what would happen if I stopped all the Exchange services on the old box, and when I got to the ExchangeIS service, I got a message that if the IS service is stopped, the Blackberry Synchronization Service, Policy Service, and Dispatcher would also stop. Kinda threw a flag, as I believe the those 3 BES services are required for BES to function, however, I'm not even using this Exchange server currently. Anyone have any idea what the implications of uninstalling Exchange from this BES box? Would BES automagically reconfigure itself if Exchange was "uninstalled" as opposed to the services just being stopped? Food for thought, as I'm in no hurry to get this removed, but I WOULD like to get it removed eventually...just to tidy things up...

Thanks in advance!
-ClevelandITGuy

[knottyrope]

personally, I would make a new VM and do a knife edge cutover to it.

or stop BES services and uninstall exchange, then see what is broken.
Since it only needs CDO, that might be all you need to get it running again unless BES is looking at exchange for GC and LDAP.

[ClevelandITGuy]

Ok, I've got an update...I took an image of the server as a precaution, then uninstalled E2K3, and BES did indeed stop those services, and after the reboot gave me the message that the dependancy group failed to start for those 3 services. Being on BES 5.0.3.31, I ran the SP3 upgrade again (5.0.3) and after the "upgrade" was complete, rebooted and all BES services started up successfully, and continued being delivered to the devices., Then applied the MR2, and again everything looks to be back to normal. I originally planned on moving BES to a VM, and took the HighAvailability switchover approach, but ran into a disaster because we don't have a support contract anymore, and couldn't get temp SRP ID and CAL. Well, during the install on the VM, I mistakenly installed 5.0 base install and that downgraded my DB and had all sorts of probles...had to do a SQL DB restore (backups are your friend...). So I figured I'd take it 1 step at a time. I'm moving to BES Express on a VM and just going to use the Transporter Tool to move the accounts. There may be an easier way, but I've at least done a BES to BESX migration at another client...so I got THAT goin' for me...which is nice...

Thanks for the help!
ClevelandITGuy