[fandpit]

Hi
possibly been asked before but if it has I cannot find it on here :(
I know its a per-license issue but is there a limit to the amount of users you can have on one 4.0.X BES?

I have searched all documentation that I can get my hands no joy on that...

any ideas?

[bertiebassett]

No its more a hardware / performance issue, rather than a hard-coded license issue.

Refer to the installation & Getting started guide for the relevant recommendations.

I would also suggest you look at upgrading from 4.0.X as thats no longer supported by RIM in terms of software updates...

[gibson_hg]

2000 is the max for any BES version/platform. I wouldn't recommend having this many on a BES but that is the max.

[fandpit]

Thanks for the pointers people I am aware this is an Old platform I have just "picked the Bat up" on this one so the upgrade is coming soon.

next up clustering but thats for another thread

[ashworth]

I dont like having more then 1000 users on my BES's. I find anything over that can give me a head ache.

[MarkF]

You know when you lean all the way back in a chair and it's just about to tip over? That's the way it feels when you have 4 BES and 1950 users on each. They still worked but it made me pretty nervous until I got 2 more BES online.

[cancundan]

Originally Posted by MarkF

You know when you lean all the way back in a chair and it's just about to tip over? That's the way it feels when you have 4 BES and 1950 users on each. They still worked but it made me pretty nervous until I got 2 more BES online.

WOW, that's more than I have seen anywhere. I am not a BES admin, but I interact with lots of BES admins from many large companies. On top of the HW variables, there is also variables around mailbox size limits, overall e-mail volume, latency between mail servers and BES, and a bunch of other stuff which impacts the total numbers that a BES can handle.

I would say most companies set limits of 1000 of 1200 users per BES. I rarely see environments that run over 1500 users per BES.

There are a few indicators when you are nearing limits - e-mail delivery times will start to increase, increase in certain errors (different depending on the platform), hung threads, notify/rescan rate etc..... So things will start trending poorly before they fall off the cliff, but max of 1000 or 1200 seems to be the norm.

[fandpit]

Originally Posted by MarkF

You know when you lean all the way back in a chair and it's just about to tip over? That's the way it feels when you have 4 BES and 1950 users on each. They still worked but it made me pretty nervous until I got 2 more BES online.

thats a heap of users.... are they clustered or stand-alone?

[gibson_hg]

Each BES is standalone, there is no BES clustering yet. Maybe someday with proper failover methods built-in.

[fandpit]

Originally Posted by gibson_hg

Each BES is standalone, there is no BES clustering yet. Maybe someday with proper failover methods built-in.

that would explain why RIM are being extra quiet when I asked about this...

[RadHaz75]

this is an issue that def makes me nervous. i get worried when we hit 1000 on a server. it also doesnt help that some of my servers have up to 5 exchange servers connected. it makes the servers take a lot longer to come back up since it has to parse through everyone's mailbox. we reboot our servers nightly in a staggered manner to avoid any possible memory leak issues. it also really slows down the server when you make a change to policy and it pushes it out to everyone.

[gibson_hg]

Keep in mind that the PC needs to sufficient hardware to support those users. Any other apps running on the BES could be a factor and also the database engine. If you are running MSDE I would not go over 500 users, it's to finicky. If you are running SQL, is it on it's own machine? Is the SQL machine powerful enought to support the DB?

I do agree that 1000 is a good limit per BES though. Especially for mailbox rescan purposes, those can take a long time to complete.

Just remember the above, plus latency from BES to mailserver and to SQL as well.

[MarkF]

We're currently averaging 1400 users on 6 BES, with each BES connecting to over 20 different E2K3 servers - no problems whatsoever. One SQL2000 database, all BES are DL385 dual core 2.3Ghz CPU, 4 GB RAM. Probably helps that we have extremely fast WAN links.

[summerfree2002]

Yeah, RIM says 2000, but from experience, the lower the number the better performance you get out of each BES. I start see problems when it is getting close to 800 users. If I could have it my way, I would want 300-400 per server.

[summerfree2002]

[kapasaca]

Bes express 15 users max (than you need an upgrade key to full bes)
Bes professional max 30 users (than you need an upgrade key to full bes)
Full Bes limitless, but on MSDE you shouldnt go higher than 1000 (exchange) and 500 (groupwise)

Full SQL up to 2000 per database

[MarkF]

"Full SQL up to 2000 per database"

Where do you see that posted? We have over 8000 on the besmgmt database with no problems. Just had a review of our environment with the Tx4 DART team and they didn't say anything about us exceeding any SQL DB limit

[kapasaca]

Originally Posted by MarkF

"Full SQL up to 2000 per database"

Where do you see that posted? We have over 8000 on the besmgmt database with no problems. Just had a review of our environment with the Tx4 DART team and they didn't say anything about us exceeding any SQL DB limit

these are the guidelines..
microsoft e.g. says you shouldn't move above 1gb on a outlook profile, still many users do without problems

[MarkF]

kapasaca - you say those are the guidelines but I'm asking for where you see those guidelines posted. I want to be able to refer to those guidelines if I need to talk to my DART team about this.

thanks
Mark

[penguin3107]

Originally Posted by kapasaca

these are the guidelines..
microsoft e.g. says you shouldn't move above 1gb on a outlook profile, still many users do without problems

There's no "guidelines" that dictate how many users you should have in a single SQL config database.
Each BES should have no more than 2000 users as a rule of thumb, but you can have many BES servers using a single SQL config DB with no trouble at all.