Upgrading to Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0

[eddiecny]

Hey all,
I have upgraded BES versions before, but within 4.2 to 4.6 which was simple. The new company I work for is currently running 4.1.6 (SP6) and I have the assignment of upgrading to 5.0. I read over the documentation, but I wanted to know if there are any things I should look out for before doing so? Seems like a huge upgrade from 4.1.6 to 5.0, plus there are about 200 users. There is only one BES, and it is in a virtual environment.

Any additional info would be great.

Thanks

[GlenB]

If you can, get a temporary SRP IP and auth key, build your new server in parallel to the existing one and move users across using the Transporter tool. This will allow you to independently test the new BES environment without affecting the old and using the Transporter will avoid the need to re-activate users you move across.

[sam2500]

I would do what GlenB recommended. We have been on version 5 for a while now and its pretty smooth.

[HawkFantastic]

I did my v 5 update right over the top of my v 4 install and had no problems. In fact, my server started out life as a BPS before installing full BES (4.x). After 1 month or so of BES 4.x I made the plunge to v5. It seemed harrowing when I was doing it, but it all turned out well. Backup your DB first. How many users do you have? I had, at the time, less than 15 so I wasn't too concerned.

[bacid]

i did extensive research before deciding to do a in-place upgrade from 4.1.5 to 5.0.1

no issues at all.

if we were running in a VM environment then i would have just created another VM and used transporter, unfortunately we aren't virtualized yet (budgeted for this year though!) so this route would have been a bit difficult.

haven't run into any issues and it's been a week, a few people had weird sync issues and had to be re-activated but out of the ~60 users it worked out to 5%

[ilguy]

We are currently running 4.1.6.17. Is the 5.0 upgrade free? Do you need to have t-support in order to do so? I'm not positive, but my company may have eliminated that in budget cuts last year. Any help is appreciated.

Also, is anyone moving fom BES to BESX? My understanding is that the only thing we'd be giving up is MDS functions, which we don't use anyway.

Thanks.

[GlenB]

@ilguy - the upgrade isnt free. You might want to look at BES Express though, it may fit your needs

[chmaro]

If you have t-support it is included as part of the t-support. Otherwise you'd have to buy it as an upgrade. The BESX is a good alternative if you can live with the slimmed down IT Policy set.