My Sunday started at 6AM with that server upgrade I spoke of here. I was able to move this back to Sunday thanks to a very understanding customer who gave me access to their office this weekend. That opened up Monday for another customer. My task was to take an Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and make sure that ActiveSync was up to date and make sure that all the relevant security patches were in place. The total time that I figured that this would take is 4 hours. Most of that is reboots. About 15 minutes to shut down the server and 15 minutes to bring it back up. I had to do that three times. Thus 90 minutes was dedicated to reboots
Now why were they doing this? This customer was going to make the move away from using BlackBerry OS devices and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and switch to the iPhone 5 and ActiveSync. The logic was that it was going to cost them roughly $70 a user times 45 users to go to BlackBerry 10 Enterprise Server (though there is an upgrade option that would have cost them $0 that they chose not to pursue), plus the cost of replacing all their older BlackBerry devices with Z10’s or Q10’s. Or they could just go out and get iPhone 5’s and use ActiveSync which comes with Exchange Server 2010 and they’d just have to pay for the iPhones. Plus if someone wanted to use a Z10 or Q10, those would work with ActiveSync as well. Finally, they’re spooked that BlackBerry is looking at “strategic alternatives.”
So, I went about my task list that I had mapped out which was as follows:
- Install Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2
- Reboot
- Install a bunch of security patches
- Reboot.
- Ensure that ActiveSync 14.1 is installed.
- Test ActiveSync with an iPhone 5 to make sure that it pushes e-mail, calendar entries, and to-do’s. Not to mention remote erasing the device.
So I set about doing these tasks at 7 AM. I had Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 on a CD so I ran that and rebooted. It took about 45 minutes to complete and waited for the server to reboot. Then I used Windows Update to update the server. That introduced 2 extra server reboots that I didn’t anticipate as there were certain security updates that would only install if other ones were present. So that added an extra 60 minutes of time that I didn’t anticipate. To kill the time, I watched a English Premier League Match on my iPhone 5. For the record, it was Arsenal vs. Tottenham which is a bitter rivalry as they are both North London teams who despise each other. For the record I am an Arsenal supporter and the scoreline went in my direction with an 1 – 0 Arsenal win. It is always a good day when Arsenal beats Tottenham.
But I digress.
After the security patches were installed I confirmed that ActiveSync 14.1 was installed. The reason why that is important is that the iOS 6 as a minimum requires that version. So once I did that, I used one of the iPhones that they had purchased to test that the updated Exchange Server could push e-mail, calendar entries, and to-do’s to the iPhone. It did perfectly. It also updated from the phone perfectly. The final test was to do a remote wipe of the device. That again worked perfectly.
So by the time I was done just after 12:30 PM, I had completed the upgrade. I’ll return to the client later this week to teach the client how to add iPhones as well as do remote wipes. Both tasks are very easy to do once you’ve done a couple in the case of the former, and the latter is extremely easy to do. Once they’ve deployed their new iPhones, they will retire their BlackBerry Enterprise Server. So, I’ll be back to turn do that and repurpose the server.
In part two of this, I’ll talk about the other half of my day. Which is waiting for Bell to fix my DSL issue.
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My Sunday Part One – The Server Upgrade
My Sunday started at 6AM with that server upgrade I spoke of here. I was able to move this back to Sunday thanks to a very understanding customer who gave me access to their office this weekend. That opened up Monday for another customer. My task was to take an Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and make sure that ActiveSync was up to date and make sure that all the relevant security patches were in place. The total time that I figured that this would take is 4 hours. Most of that is reboots. About 15 minutes to shut down the server and 15 minutes to bring it back up. I had to do that three times. Thus 90 minutes was dedicated to reboots
Now why were they doing this? This customer was going to make the move away from using BlackBerry OS devices and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and switch to the iPhone 5 and ActiveSync. The logic was that it was going to cost them roughly $70 a user times 45 users to go to BlackBerry 10 Enterprise Server (though there is an upgrade option that would have cost them $0 that they chose not to pursue), plus the cost of replacing all their older BlackBerry devices with Z10’s or Q10’s. Or they could just go out and get iPhone 5’s and use ActiveSync which comes with Exchange Server 2010 and they’d just have to pay for the iPhones. Plus if someone wanted to use a Z10 or Q10, those would work with ActiveSync as well. Finally, they’re spooked that BlackBerry is looking at “strategic alternatives.”
So, I went about my task list that I had mapped out which was as follows:
So I set about doing these tasks at 7 AM. I had Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 on a CD so I ran that and rebooted. It took about 45 minutes to complete and waited for the server to reboot. Then I used Windows Update to update the server. That introduced 2 extra server reboots that I didn’t anticipate as there were certain security updates that would only install if other ones were present. So that added an extra 60 minutes of time that I didn’t anticipate. To kill the time, I watched a English Premier League Match on my iPhone 5. For the record, it was Arsenal vs. Tottenham which is a bitter rivalry as they are both North London teams who despise each other. For the record I am an Arsenal supporter and the scoreline went in my direction with an 1 – 0 Arsenal win. It is always a good day when Arsenal beats Tottenham.
But I digress.
After the security patches were installed I confirmed that ActiveSync 14.1 was installed. The reason why that is important is that the iOS 6 as a minimum requires that version. So once I did that, I used one of the iPhones that they had purchased to test that the updated Exchange Server could push e-mail, calendar entries, and to-do’s to the iPhone. It did perfectly. It also updated from the phone perfectly. The final test was to do a remote wipe of the device. That again worked perfectly.
So by the time I was done just after 12:30 PM, I had completed the upgrade. I’ll return to the client later this week to teach the client how to add iPhones as well as do remote wipes. Both tasks are very easy to do once you’ve done a couple in the case of the former, and the latter is extremely easy to do. Once they’ve deployed their new iPhones, they will retire their BlackBerry Enterprise Server. So, I’ll be back to turn do that and repurpose the server.
In part two of this, I’ll talk about the other half of my day. Which is waiting for Bell to fix my DSL issue.
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This entry was posted on September 1, 2013 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.