BPS on Domino 8.5

[mpm_pfs]

Hello all,

I have come to the conclusion that I am no longer going to wait for RIM to certify Blackberry Professional Software compatible with Domino 8.5. I will be upgrading to Domino 8.5 (from 7.0.3) and BB be damned, and I have two questions hopefully someone here can help me with

1) Real simple & straigh forward - Has anyone else attempted to forge ahead anyway? If so, would you kindly share your experience?

2) I want to test a functional BPS install on a domino 8.5 server prior to upgrading our production environment. I duplicated our domino servers onto a test network to verify all our apps and deployment scenarios work (all is well). I reverted the test mail server to 7.0.3 to duplicate the upgrade process. I installed BPS 4.1.4B, registered it with RIM (different SRP key than production) and it works, kind of. Since the mail server is a duplicate of our production systems, all the user info is identical. Therefore, BPS starts acting funny once I allow Internet access to the test server - users start showing up without adding them. I register myself on the test server (after removing myself from the production) but it fails, as any email activity runs through the production system. This, of course make perfect sense as registerd usernames, email addresses and phone PINs have not changed between production & test. So, does anyone have any suggestions on how I can test the functionality and upgrade process on a seperate test machine? I would prefer to keep the test server as close to production as possible. If RIM won't support BPS on D8.5 I want to experience any possible problems before I upgrade.


If it makes a difference, we have, what I would consider, a basic setup. 11 BB phones connected to BPS server which is installed on our single domino mail server. We only sync Mail, calendar and Contacts, we do not use any other features such as MDS or VPN through the BPS system. We do not use Domino webmail or Sametime as part of our BB solutions.





Thanks

Matt

[Rh1noo]

You need at least BES 4.1 sp6 for Domino 8 support but you probably know that.

Why don't you apply for a 60 day licence key for BES 5.0 from RIM on the Smartphones, Cell Phones & Smart Phones at BlackBerry.com web site. They will then send you a temp SRP key and link to download the software.

You then use the BES 5.0 software with the same SRP key you have to test BES 5.0.

You will need to remove any users that you would like have on the BES 5.0 server from the BPS and reactivate them on BES 5.0. There is a migration tool with BES 5.0 but I have not tried it in a Domino enviroment.

On a side note I did know a customer who used BES 4.1.4 with Domino 8 and it seemed to work ok, but not Dom 8.5.

[mpm_pfs]

We only moved from Windows Mobile devices to BB because of free server cost (special offer through carrier) of BPS. With limited cash, I want to avoid spending $$ to upgrade to a BES solution if at all possible.

(It is a Plan "C" option I'll be prepairing our CFO on).

[Rh1noo]

I suspect there will be an update to BPS but not for a few months. It may have a new name as well but this is only rumours I've heard from a trainer at RIM so I can't say for certain.

RIM have let small customers down by not keeping BPS up to date, or are they trying to make you upgrade to BES 5.0???

[mpm_pfs]

Yeah, I think their lack of development, or even communication on the future, of BPS is poor at best. At this point, even if they came out and said BPS is dead forever, I would at least be able to make better migration plans for our email systems.

Anyway, I am trudging ahead (on a test box) of upgrading Domino from 7.0.3 to 8.5 with BPS 4.1.4.17. I'll post any major findings or headaches I have in the process. Again, if anyone else has moved forward on this platform please add your experiences as well.

matt

[mpm_pfs]

After upgrading the domino server, everything seems to be OK. I can email in and out, and replication to the BB seems just fine. There is a little longer lag time before the handheld is updated compared to our production servers, but I am not sure if that is a domino issue or server resrouces (test server is running on a desktop comptuer with all domino, BB, and SQL functions running locally).

Calendar updates seem fine. I can schedule a meeting from the phone, pulling invitees from the domino directory, I can accept meetings on the phone.

Address book is the only issue so far. Any address added on the phone replicates properly to my Notes address book, but when I open that name in Notes I receive an error: Cannot Find Form: DBAPerson." After I hit ok, the contact opens fine.

This is all under leaving the notes user's mail file in the 7.x template.

[mpm_pfs]

Alright, what is not supposed to work on v 4.1.4 (comparable to BES)? I've upgraded the mail and address book templates to 8.5 and everything is still working.

In fact the calendaring and address book between the handled and Notes seems to function even better.

Obviously, an hour of testing is not enough, i'll keep playing with it for a week or so, but I'm not seeing any indication of problems or any reason why 8.5 would not be supported on BPS.

[HawkFantastic]

I have a Domino 8.5 mail server running on an iSeries (AS/400). My BES server is running on a 2K3 server with 8.5. I have 10 users with no issues (short of any BPS shortcoming). Mail/PIM/etc. synch both ways w/out issue(s).

[Tiassa]

Can you guys post the specs of the machines you are using to run Domino 8.5 + BPS? I"m about to embark on that journey as well and I have a machine that I think will work (P4 3Ghz, 768meg, W2K3 Server), it will only be used by a few people (me, mostly) but I'd like to know if I'm under powered.

[HawkFantastic]

My 2K3 server is VM'd and I've only allocated a GB of RAM. I would think you would be OK with your config Tiassa.