Domino 8 Upgrade & BES relocation
 

Ok, I just want to clarify that I am only looking for opinions or suggestions. I don't need a how to, since I already know how to accomplish the tasks.

Currently, we have BES Express 4.1.6 installed with Domino 6.5. Both reside on the same server with the SQL db on a separate server. We need to decommission the BES/Domino server. My boss wants to go to Domino 8 on a new server.

We only have 12 users on BES and that number won't jump at all anytime soon. So staying with Express or going to Professional Server is adequate for our needs.

So my question is once the Domino 8 upgrade is complete, would it be best to do a BES cutover or to simply start from scratch since it will only affect 12 users and just force them to activate on the new server? Thoughts? Suggestions?

I'd say go from scratch with only 12 users. However, you could always ask the 12 for their opinion as to the level of inconvenience of reactivating and go with the majority.

You will likely have a difficult time if you attempt to re-create these users on the new server. Reason being is the IT policy. The one from your current server will remain intact, and you may run into problems activating on the new server with an existing policy in place. If you go that route, you may need to remove the policy before you'll be able to activate on the new server. We ran into some issues with that when attempting that scenario.

If you are IT policy you will need to wipe the device before activating on the new server. It is a fairly easy to do a knife edge cutover to the new hardware running Domino.

Id build the new server and connect it in to the same sql db. Then do a user move and decommission the old server after you do the user move. You can do a couple different things for the cutover depending on what you want. With 12 users this is a pretty simple upgrade for you.

If you start from scratch you can copy the key in the original SQL db to the new one so that you dont have to wipe devices but I still would do a normal cutover using the existing SQL db.


Make sure you dont upgrade your ODS to ODS48 for your BB files (state, profile, etc) because RIM does not support ODS48 at this time. Also if you are going with Domino 8.0 or 8.0.1 make sure you put HF372 on so that you dont run into problems with the mime to cd conversion issue with Domino 8 and 8.0.1.

If you have any users who email in Non-English do not upgrade to Domino 8.0 yet!

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We're having to run 2 servers due to this.

Thanks for the suggestions. I was already leaning toward a cut-over but the boss wanted everything as a clean/fresh start. I think having less user interaction is best, but since we have such a small user base, I wanted to get opinions