BlackBerry® Professional Software and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express

[mwerner]

In fact, I've looked into this and think (yes, think) I'm on the right track.

First, here's my setup:

Windows 2003 Server SP2

BPS 4.1 (with SQL - MSDE 2005)

1. I backed up the database using the osql commands:

C:\>osql -E

1> backup database besmgmt to disk = "E:\BU\besmgmt.bak"
2> go

Note: even to test, I had to back up to an external hard drive because I could not backup to the C:\ or to C:\BU. Apparently a permissions problem:

C:\>osql -E
1> backup database besmgmt to disk = "C:\BU\besmgmt.bak"
2> go

Msg 3201, Level 16, State 1, Server BPS01, Line 1
Cannot open backup device 'C:\BU\besmgmt.bak'. Operating system error 3(The system cannot find the path specified.).

Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Server BPS01, Line 1
BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

Anyway...

2. I backup the "Research in Motion" folder under "Program Files" using Windows backup (ntbackup).

So, is that about right?

Other questions...

A. What am I backing up exactly? Or why? Wouldn't all the important data (messages, etc.) be on the Exchange server?

B. .bak file is only 9 MB (file produced by the osql backup database command above)

Yet...

BESMGMT.mdf is 102 MB

BESMGMT.ldf is 26 MB

Simply compression at work?

C. How often should the BPS database(s) be backed up? Nightly? Weekly? See question A. just above

Thank you in advance!

[CerealBypass · Accepted solution]

Really, the only thing you need to have is the .bak backup of the database. All of your users, licenses and configuration data are stored in the database. If the worst were to happen, you could get everything back up by restoring your BAK file to a over top of a blank BlackBerry database and reinstalling the software. A few things to consider:

You should have a hard copy of your license keys, SRP info and the instance name of the BPS. If you were to reinstall, you would need to ensure that the instance name (the name of the server as it appears in BlackBerry Manager) is the same, even though the machine name might be different.

[knottyrope]

for simple database back up

http://sqlbackupandftp.com/

Click on BlackBerry Domain on the left pane.
Then in the right pane, select the 'Global' tab, expand 'Account', and choose 'License Management'.
You should see:
License Total:
Used:
Free:

or

From command-line, you can do the following:

bcp "select LicenseKey from BESMgmt.dbo.LicenseKeys where type = 0" queryout c:\licensekeys.txt -c -T -R -E -Sdbservername

That will export all installed license keys to the text file specified in the command. Just be sure to change dbservername to your SQL/MSDE server. This needs to be run from a server/machine that has bcp.exe installed, though (installed by default with SQL and MSDE installations).