Friday rant over BES

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YeOldeStonecat

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Why did I offer to install BES for some clients..

//picks up Louisville Slugger and proceeds to whack himself in the back of the head

)(*@!_@)(!(*&%
 
Because you're an outstanding IT professional who caters to his customers wishes? :)

I imagine the BES install went fine, but getting clients setup with it has been going otherwise?
 
Gott said:
Because you're an outstanding IT professional who caters to his customers wishes? :)

I imagine the BES install went fine, but getting clients setup with it has been going otherwise?
Click to expand...

Initial install went OK
Ran 4x users for several months.
Somehow last week...users stopped getting updates...
Through working with BES support (after 2.5 hours of hold)..found somehow the SRP got "whacky". Dunno..it just would hand when trying to phone home and verify.
BES sends me a "temporary" SRP, while on the phone
I install it...verify it...seems good.
My contact at this client, while on the phone, says his BB caught up with e-mail..assumed all was good.
Later that afternoon, client calls up...calendars cannot synch up on any BBs.
Call BES support...but after spending the afternoon on hold...hey..had to go home and have dinner. Check with BESAdmin forums....one helpful guy there..says "Oh yeah...when you change SRPs...the phones will no longer synch, since the server now has a new identity.

Uhm....OK, sounds logical..but...//enters screaming rant mode// "Why didn't BES support tell me this when they did this over the phone with me?" Had to find out via the forums over there how to "hand wipe" the phones and run them through re-enterprise-activation again. One works great initially, two more take several tries, the fourth just flat out fails period.
 
Haha I hate to laugh but I've been through something similar. Luckily it was on our end and only the boss was using BES. Good thing we scrapped BES because he was having constant issues with it and we just use OMA for all purposes.

And BES is Blackberry Enterprise Server.
 
Gott said:
Haha I hate to laugh but I've been through something similar. Luckily it was on our end and only the boss was using BES. Good thing we scrapped BES because he was having constant issues with it and we just use OMA for all purposes
Click to expand...

I'd always intentionally stayed away from supporting clients PDAs. I wanted to draw the line somewhere..I don't do phones, I don't do PDAs. But so many people asking about them craskberries...I caved and got a Pearl myself, and setup BES on our office Exchange box. Went wicked easy, runs flawlessly for me..so figured easy for clients. Heh...wrong! Guess when you have multiple users, etc. Meh.
 
I thought about doing something like this, but went with Exchange+iPhone instead. Sacrificing flexibility for simplicity was the best move I made, haven't ever looked back. Sorry for your headaches. :p
 
Wow, that sucks i have never used BES support, havn't run into an issue i couldn't figure out with them. Other than that i have 6 BES servers, one of which sits on lotus domino and they all rock and roll.
 
I did BES support through the blackberry management console at work all summer during my internship. It seemed to work fine. Most of the problems occured at users not having BES accounts for their blackberries or not knowing how to navigate the blackberry itself to input the activation code.
 
Hey Brian- curious, is this on an SBS box? I know you've had some BES issues before, don't understand. I have a bunch of them, all with multiple users, running on all kinds of hardware, never had a single issue- not once. It's usually pretty bullet-proof.
 
twwabw said:
Hey Brian- curious, is this on an SBS box? I know you've had some BES issues before, don't understand. I have a bunch of them, all with multiple users, running on all kinds of hardware, never had a single issue- not once. It's usually pretty bullet-proof.
Click to expand...

Si...ran smooth for what now..6 months or so. Somehow the SRP went bad on their end (they have ways of testing the SRP on their end..and he found an issue with it). I can understand that..but my rant was just over the fact that the BES support guy should have known and informed me that when you change the SRP, you must hand-wipe and re-enterprise-activate the phones.
 
We have the BES and of course blackberries of all flavors. We are trying out the iPhones as well. However, users that have both are constantly calling in because their AD accounts lock up. Once their authenticaitons are removed from the iphone their AD accounts work just fine. Seems like the BB and the iPhone can't work together in harmony. It's a pain in the ass.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
..but my rant was just over the fact that the BES support guy should have known and informed me that when you change the SRP, you must hand-wipe and re-enterprise-activate the phones.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Brain dead support. I actually only had to deal with them one time, and the guy was great. It was my mistake too, and he knew what it was instantly. BESAdmin forums was a good place to start- they have a lot of pretty sharp guys on that forum- great resource. The time I had to call support was actually originated via Verizon tech support, whom I started the call with. Maybe they're able to by-pass the Tier 1 mongoloids.
 
BES cacuses your exchange disk IOPS to double and up to Quadruple over a standrad user on Exchange 2003. Just something to keep in mind when you start planning for and using BES. You don't want to just hand them out to everyone.
 
BES and BPS are nothing but trouble IMO. I did my first install a few weeks ago and had to start all over again with another technician. Love the phones and the capability, but hate installing the servers.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
)(*@)@*(!&# %$*()&$% )@(*$)(#%

)(*#$(&*@!)(#!_)(@*#\

Why did I offer to install BES for some clients..

//picks up Louisville Slugger and proceeds to whack himself in the back of the head

)(*@!_@)(!(*&%
Click to expand...


BES is simple to install - assuming you've done it before. If you're a first timer, better make sure you have all your docs ready so you know what permissions need to be changed.
 
shade91 said:
BES is simple to install - assuming you've done it before. If you're a first timer, better make sure you have all your docs ready so you know what permissions need to be changed.
Click to expand...

Did you read any of the thread before posting? Its already been said that he was able to setup everything fine and everything was well for ~6 months.until an issue appeared out of nowhere. His gripe was not so much with BES but w/ their support team...
 
shade91 said:
BES is simple to install - assuming you've done it before. If you're a first timer, better make sure you have all your docs ready so you know what permissions need to be changed.
Click to expand...

Reading posts is simple....assuming you've done it before.

Read what went wrong. I went through the learning curve first, installing my own, up and running in a breeze. (creating the system accounts, proper permissions within Exchange, etc)....and it ran and runs great.

The issue with my clients BES stemmed from their SRP identifier going flakey...on BESs end, not my clients server end. And the fallout that the BES support guy should have prevented when he sent me the "temp" SRP.
 
d3c1us said:
Did you read any of the thread before posting? Its already been said that he was able to setup everything fine and everything was well for ~6 months.until an issue appeared out of nowhere. His gripe was not so much with BES but w/ their support team...
Click to expand...

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that, no, I didn't. I didn't feel like reading it. Never ever had an SRP key go wacky on me either. Upgrades with BES though *NEVER* go straight-forward for me. I f'ing hate it.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Initial install went OK
Ran 4x users for several months.
Somehow last week...users stopped getting updates...
Through working with BES support (after 2.5 hours of hold)..found somehow the SRP got "whacky". Dunno..it just would hand when trying to phone home and verify.
BES sends me a "temporary" SRP, while on the phone
I install it...verify it...seems good.
My contact at this client, while on the phone, says his BB caught up with e-mail..assumed all was good.
Later that afternoon, client calls up...calendars cannot synch up on any BBs.
Call BES support...but after spending the afternoon on hold...hey..had to go home and have dinner. Check with BESAdmin forums....one helpful guy there..says "Oh yeah...when you change SRPs...the phones will no longer synch, since the server now has a new identity.

Uhm....OK, sounds logical..but...//enters screaming rant mode// "Why didn't BES support tell me this when they did this over the phone with me?" Had to find out via the forums over there how to "hand wipe" the phones and run them through re-enterprise-activation again. One works great initially, two more take several tries, the fourth just flat out fails period.
Click to expand...

Yea I could have told you that. It has happened to me before. Also yes Rims support sucks ass. Last time I called them I waited like 45 minutes on the phone. I had the issue figured out right as they picked up. Told them I figured it out myself and hung up.

YeOldeStonecat said:
I'd always intentionally stayed away from supporting clients PDAs. I wanted to draw the line somewhere..I don't do phones, I don't do PDAs. But so many people asking about them craskberries...I caved and got a Pearl myself, and setup BES on our office Exchange box. Went wicked easy, runs flawlessly for me..so figured easy for clients. Heh...wrong! Guess when you have multiple users, etc. Meh.
Click to expand...

Yea I got nailed with handling all of the phone issues with my firm. They had stayed as far away as possible from them and I knew pdas when I started. Soon after starting the other guys got blackberries and when I rebuilt are server a year ago or so I loaded BES on it(had it running off my home server before that). Now we have like 6 clients running BES and others have windows mobile phones or blackberries without bes.

I have pretty much refused to work on those fucking palm phones though. Any palm phone including the ones running windows mobile. Got tired of them just not working with email. I support 1 treo. Client has to use it because act wouldn't run with windows mobile 6 and all windows mobile phones are now 6 or 6.1. I agreed to do it and have fought like hell with it. Ever other client that gets one I make someone elce deal with. I just can't deal with them. The windows mobile treos have issues no other windows mobile phone does(last one I worked on gave a different error everytime I tried to connect). The palm based ones just don't support email(I don't consider versamail an email client because it sucks so much ass and has major issues even with straight pop/imap).
 
swatbat said:
Also yes Rims support sucks ass.
Click to expand...

QFT. RIM comes second only to Dell in terms of clueless useless incompetent people who don't have the slightest fucking idea what they are doing. I have been fortunate that I have not had to rely on RIM too often for BES/BPS support. However, the occasions I have had to use them have all ended badly.

Two weeks ago, I had to order additional connection licenses for a client running BPS. I actually had two people at RIM tell me they had never heard of BPS.
 
mps said:
QFT. RIM comes second only to Dell in terms of clueless useless incompetent people who don't have the slightest fucking idea what they are doing. I have been fortunate that I have not had to rely on RIM too often for BES/BPS support. However, the occasions I have had to use them have all ended badly.

Two weeks ago, I had to order additional connection licenses for a client running BPS. I actually had two people at RIM tell me they had never heard of BPS.
Click to expand...

Dells business support isn't too bad. Their home support sucks.

As far as BPS goes they even call it Enterprise instead of professional. Blackberry professional software is just the new name for Blackberry Enterprise for SBS. It goes by so many names that you can't follow it. For licenses I just order them from Rims website.
 
k1pp3r said:
Wow, that sucks i have never used BES support, havn't run into an issue i couldn't figure out with them. Other than that i have 6 BES servers, one of which sits on lotus domino and they all rock and roll.
Click to expand...

Quick question - does your BES server sit on the same box as Domino?

I'm asking because I don't think the person that installed the system, a person with the technical abilities of a rock, did it right. She relied heavily on a consultant recommended from RIM, who also knew about as much about getting lotus and bes together as any toddler. He-said she-said etc. that we had to have BES on a separate box.
 
Vette5885 said:
Quick question - does your BES server sit on the same box as Domino?

I'm asking because I don't think the person that installed the system, a person with the technical abilities of a rock, did it right. She relied heavily on a consultant recommended from RIM, who also knew about as much about getting lotus and bes together as any toddler. He-said she-said etc. that we had to have BES on a separate box.
Click to expand...

Generaly speaking you want BES on a different box the domino from what I understand(only have used it with exchange). I want to say they have a limit on home many users you can run if it is on the same box. In exchange it is 30.
 
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