Installing BES in a Virtual Environment

Hi folks, today I’d like to talk about BES installations. I find that BES is one of those server installations that lends itself well to virtualization. You see I like to run BES on it’s own server so if you need to reboot it or perform any maintenance, it won’t affect other services.

Of course buying a brand new server just for BES isn’t exactly cost effective. This is where virtualization comes in. Using VMWare you can easily setup a tiny VM with minimal resources just for BES. The downside to this however is that how are you going to plug in a BlackBerry directly to the BES server via USB cable if you need to troubleshoot a BlackBerry device that isn’t synchronizing properly wirelessly?

Well the solution to this is actually pretty straightforward. In most virtualized environments you will usually have one server that is not virtual (a management server as I like to call them), that allows you to manage the virtualized environment with all the administration tools installed on it and perhaps even backup software to backup or replicate the virtual machines to another location. On this same server you can just install the Blackberry Management console and point it at the BES server. This way you can plug in USB devices to the physical management server and the devices will communicate with your virtual BES server.

-RP