I wanted to take a moment to document a conversation I had with Dominique Nance of Information Strike Force (ISF) yesterday. The phone call concerned several issues with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) which she maintains on behalf of the Department of The Navy Headquarters Network (DNHN) BlackBerry users. The machine is currently supporting approximately 235 users. About 170 of these users can be attributed to DON CIO purchased BlackBerry devices. This means there are an additional 65 devices being served by the BES which were not purchased by DON CIO. Hosting these additional devices on the BES is something DON CIO agreed to do when INPO began hosting the machine many months ago. This agreement was before ISF assumed responsibility for the DNHN. Over the last year, Dominique Nance, Captain Jeff Campbell and I have worked together to promote the use of the BES throughout the DNHN community.

Over the last several weeks, Dominique has been working with engineers from Research In Motion (RIM) to solve a resource problem related to the BES. The machine has been locking up due to exhausted threads, which is a software issue. RIM has sent a Service Pack to Dominique which was installed. We are still waiting to see if the problem is fixed. RIM advertises a single BES is capable of handling 500 users. I have had conversations with other large BlackBerry deployments and the administrators of the installations tell me they are only getting between 200-250 users on a BES. It is entirely possible this BES is nearing it's capacity and the software problem could be related. I would ask that no additional users be added to the BES until this problem is resolved. Once the problem is resolved, there needs to coordination with the DON CIO office before any additional users are added to the BES. If we are approaching the physical limitation of the server, we may need to consider purchasing an additional BES or installing the current BES on more robust hardware.

The second issue is related to the BESADMIN mailbox. This is a special Exchange mailbox used by the BES. The mailbox contains all the server configuration parameters as well as BlackBerry devices allowed to connect to the BES. This BESADMIN mailbox is hosted by the NDWMSG1 Exchange Server. NDWMSG1's Information Store became corrupt last week. ISF personnel were able to build a new Exchange Server and merge the mailboxes from NDWMSG1 to the new server. Apparently the tool used by ISF did not merge all the necessary information from the old server to the new server with respect to the BESADMIN account. This missing information was required by the BES for proper operation. ISF was eventually able to recover this missing information and get the BES working again. According to Dominique, there was a small amount of luck involved! I think this incident shows the need to identify an additional tool to be used to either backup or mirror the BESADMIN mailbox. This tools must backup all the hidden files which the current ISF tool does not.

I would like to offer my assistance to ISF if they feel it is necessary to help solve these two issues. There are many senior Navy personnel being hosted on this BES who have come to rely on it's services.

-- Anonymous, December 06, 2001

Answers

Spannman

Your analysis of the NDWMSG1 issue is accurate. The story I got from the Site Manger was the tool did not work because the person in charge failed to identify the files that needed to be moved. Only after I asked why BB was not working did they bother to go check it. This last part is really the problem, they don't pay attention to the detail or do a through job.

We have not issued any BB devices and will work with you to limit any further growth.

Gary

-- Anonymous, December 06, 2001