[Baggarly]

We migrated the BES to VM Ware and I was just wondering if I access the server via remote desktop connection, will it recognize my USB port for wired activation?

[the maddman]

Some of VMWare products (VMWare Server or Workstation) support USB connections to the VM, and I have succesfully activated a BB to a test BES server that way, but if you are using ESX, there is no USB support from VMWare.

Something like Digi's Anywhere USB would probably work instead. (I'd post a link, but I need 4 more posts)

[the maddman]

Ok, I'm not really with it today, but if you need to do wired activations with your BES server in a VM, you can install the Blackberry Manager on a local PC and activate that way. That's what I do here when I need to activate a Nextel BB and don't want to wait for it.

That's a lot cheaper than a Networked USB hub.

[fadmin]

Originally Posted by the maddman

Ok, I'm not really with it today, but if you need to do wired activations with your BES server in a VM, you can install the Blackberry Manager on a local PC and activate that way.

That's correct.

[Baggarly]

The blackberry desktop manager?

[the maddman]

Originally Posted by Baggarly

The blackberry desktop manager?

No, you want to run the setup from BES and select just "Blackberry Manager" and point it at your BES server's SQL database.

[knottyrope]

Originally Posted by the maddman

No, you want to run the setup from BES and select just "Blackberry Manager" and point it at your BES server's SQL database.

And make sure Remote manager is same patch and MR revision as the BES.

[Baggarly]

I heard that doing this could supposedly cause corruption to the SQL database? Any truth to that?

[the maddman]

Originally Posted by Baggarly

I heard that doing this could supposedly cause corruption to the SQL database? Any truth to that?

I've never heard of that, and I've never encountered it here, we have 4 remote Blackberry Manager installs here.

[Baggarly]

Can you give me step by step on this. I'm not fully understanding. And thanks for the help by the way. I appreciate it.

[the maddman]

Well, unless you're running Groupwise, I can't give you a full step by step but:

On your management workstation, run the BES Setup program.
Agree to the license terms
Select "Blackberry Manager" as what you want to install.
Reboot when it tells you to and log back in as the same user account

It'll then have you setup the connection to the BES Management database, I'm just using MSDE here, so I just give it the host name of my BES server and leave the rest at the defaults.