[Urlryn]

What is generally the max number of Blackberry's that can be activated at one time to a single BES server?

Is there a cap or a rule of thumb?
Is there a loss of bandwidth/communications if too many are trying to sync with the server at once?

Reason asking this is i'm attempting to stress testing my new server for when I have to goto other sites to re-activate my users. Some sites such as our corporate location have as many as 100+ blackberries and I'd like to be done in a timely manner so to speak and not spend my life redoing these!

Urlryn

[Frank Castle]

When I did my migration from 3.6 to 4.1 I was doing batches of 75-100 and had no issues. What is the likelyhood X number will kick off at the same time? I believe RIM makes a spreadsheet that allows you to see the server load. Not sure if EA is part of that though.

[penguin3107]

It's all situational, but you can have 1000+ devices on 1 bes with no real problems at all.
There's many factors that determine your capacity, which you have not spoken about, so it's difficult to say what YOUR system will be able to handle.

How is your BES environment set up?
What kind of hardware do you have?
How fast in your internet pipe?
What type of database server are you using for the configuration DB?
etc..


(Reading your question again... I believe I have misunderstood your question.)

[DarkWater]

It is based on your environment and the user data that has to be synchronized to the handheld.

Do you have fast servers and a fast network?
Are you doing the activations during a high use period?
How large is the user's mailbox? Calendar? Address book?

An activation of a regular user of say <250MB mailbox should only take up to around 10-20 minutes if not faster if everything is running smoothly. That's being conservative.

If you are trying to activate a lot of users, one after another after another.. you will be putting work on the BES and Exchange over what it would be doing if everyone was already active.

The BES has to generate the service books and policy information. Then read the mailbox items and organize them to send to the handheld encrypted.

[Urlryn]

unfort our company is way generous in mailbox size.

500MB each

And most people tend to be in the 300-500range.

Server is a Dell 2950 with like 16GB of Memory
User base is around 500-600 and growing
We have a DS3 pipe so that shouldn't be a problem.

I guess my lack of understanding is how data/communications works. And what iI mean is Blackberry Handhelds sends to thier carriers (Tmobile,Verizon,Cingular) Satillite which then filters down to thier infastructure then gets routed to our network then routed to the blackberry server? Are there any documents of anytype that explains all this type of stuff?

Each BB is being wiped. Users are being deleted from the old server (MSDE), added to a new one (SQL) and re-activated. And this is def not by my choice.....darn management!

Ideally I'd like to be able to sit 10-15 at a time and activate them all at the same time. Rather then doing 1 at a time one after another.

Urlryn