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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Unable to open the BlackBerry Administration Service site - Quick Tip

If for some reason you cannot open the BlackBerry Administration Service, check that the HTTP SSL service isn't running (IIS will have this running, but in this case it wasn't so be wary :), as it will be locking down your 443 port, as you would expect :)

Had me stumped for a while there.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Blackbery Certified in 5.0 for Exchange and Domino as of Today :)

Passed :)

Thursday, May 7, 2009

I'm on Twitter - succumbing to pressure, finally they say....

Yes.... yes I am.... Suprise suprise(now facebooks another issue, don't get me started!).

Love twitterberry, essential app not to be hidden away :)

Needs more features, and I'm sure they'll come, no need to discuss.

Anyway, follow me on a more rounded IT perspective in my day to day travels @ http://www.twitter.com/ashleyarmitt

:)

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Top BES 5.0 Review

Located Here

Brendan Zivcic has just posted a great summary of the experience and features of BES 5.0 over @ blackberrycool.com.

Great to see fellow lovers of the Black fellowiship getting involved.

When you have a chance, go through it and take it in, well worth the read as it's well summarized for you marketing types out there, to the point.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

BES 5.0

Well... now the cats out of the Bag...

I can finally talk about BES 5.0 ! Yay!

I have been using it now for the last two months, and have sat the 5.0 Beta Exams in Domino and Exchange, and I'd like to say that I am extremely impressed with 5.0.

But first, we will need to address the change in Administration of the server for the critics. I like it and I hate it at the same time. I see in large organizations with multiple admins and a distributed help desk environment do need to have something that is easily accessible and not a strain on the COE, so having a Web Based only administration method seems the logical choice here, but.... the 4.1 console has been around for a while now and the popularity of BES has multiplied immensely since 4.0 and people have really fallen in love with the 4.1 console. One particular point was in service pack 2 when RIM re-introduced the right - click due to popular demand, this was such a relief as we all came from 4.0 right? Well now we have gone back to a web based, no right click version, that seems like it takes twice as long to do anything again, now I do realise for 5.0 that this is there first to the masses release and haven't perfected it yet, the 4.1 optional extra admin service was not widely used and still isn't so I guess a true reflection on the usability wasn't established.

Here's a thought RIM.

Why not have an option in the install to chose the default install ?

1. Web Based
2. Console

and then run setup again to install either at a later date.

As for the other well published features, mirroring,ha etc... they are fantastic, great direction from RIM.

I think BES 5.0 coupled with SQL 2005, Exchange 2007/Domino 8, Wireless Upgrades, and 5.0 Handset Code on a Bold is going to absolutely blow all the competition away, yet again!

Price it right and watch it fly!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

SRP Dispatcher Dropouts and Non-Starts

Although it is not recommended to be running 3rd Party software on a BES, it is most offen the case that there will be other software, for some strange and obscure reason, on the server sucking down those precious resources.

If by chance you happen to come accross a rogue (for theatrical reasons) application that just so happens to leech onto port 3101, and you don't want to change the port for some reason, then the best way to do this is to modify the registry to lock the blackberry app to the port explicitly.

Heres a good little doc from MS - M$

if you do a pilot, do a pilot

Taken from itnews.com.au

Large organisations need to get better at "moving faster" when projects are working better than expected and putting a stop to projects when things aren't going so well, he said.

"Also, if you do a pilot, do a pilot," he said. "How many of you have done a pilot that somehow becomes a production system? We put out a BlackBerry pilot to 50 staff, when it got to 1000 staff, questions were asked. It was a pilot you couldn't turn off."

=========

This is sooo true, as I have seen many a pilot move into production within a few months, with no great thought to how the solution (sometimes it wasn't even implemented as a solution!) is giong to operate in 6/12/18 months at down the track. And typically it ends up being in the too hard basket and doesn't ever get proper funding or resources to make it have HighAvailability/Redundancy and scalable.

On a side note, send me an email, if you need some advice, I'm alway willing to help (and maybe charge at the same time :) ).

Friday, January 23, 2009

Barack Obama - Special Package ???

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24951266-5012572,00.html?referrer=email

Referring to the above link...

As the article states, the US President has allegedly received a " "super encryption package" custom-built by the National Security Agency. ".

Someone like myself is intrigued by this as with a device that is straight out of your local Blackberry store you have the ability in conjunction with a BES to use AES 256 bit encryption of the data in transit aswell as the data on the device and/or memory card. On top of this you can use certificate based authentication aswell a secure mime. You can alos use your favourite VPN with a token and use a swipe card reader aswell. You can also change your key store password any time you like if you feel it is has been comprimised (so slim of a chance), also firewall for random messages and unwanted services and default application permissions, just incase this gets into a bit of trouble some how, secure encrypted carrier phone calls, not to mention the total control from the BES using a private peer to peer encryption key and minimising password attemps, compelxity requirements, disabling non essential blackberry services, duress notification, wipe on holstering etc... the list goes on ........

Now my math is pretty good, but to do the math on the above I can only imagine the amount of time needed for the best spec PC to allow someone to hack into an Obama layer cake like this.

My predication is that there is actually nothing special besides what I have mentioned, out of the box delivered by the Blackberry that the National Security Agency has done.

I can only imagine that there has been an application on there that has been placed to provide challenge questions periodically or the like, to ensure it is actually the president using the device... or something of the like.

I think an internal attack from within the network is more likely than someone wirelessly launching an attack on Obamas baby blackberry, but, it's about getting stolen I would say.

Anyway, that's my Two Cents.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Interim Security Update 2

Has been released.

Word of note, is that when you apply it to an early service pack, i.e. sp3 and upgrdae to say, sp5 you will have to reapply the patch again, sounds obvious, but i'm sure a ton of BESAdmins will forget to do this simple thing.

Back from the dead...

It's been a while, as I have been on two months Holdidays :)

But i'm back and better this year.