I did a post a while back on Firewall and connection requirements for the BlackBerry Internet Service ... but I still constantly see / hear people asking questions about what is required for BES.

Unfortunately the one recurring theme is people opening port 3101 inbound and I just shake my head. If you read the basic installation documentation you'll see this isn't needed and in fact makes your environment less secure and gives the appearance that BES is less secure as it would seem...

I've seen lots of chatter / hopes / wishes / failed attempts about Exchange 2010 working with BES. Keep in mind though, that once you bring in Exchange 2010 you're changing Active Directory and limiting future possibilities ... and possibly breaking things

Some things to keep in mind about Exchange 2007 from Microsoft:

• Exchange Server 2003 is not supported in Active Directory environments whose domain/forest functional levels have been raised beyond Windows Server 2003. However,

...

My buddy Otto sent me a link to the BES 5.0 Performance Benchmarking Guide.

I'm working on a multi-part post on performance comparing 4.x and 5.x performance ... rest assured there will be plenty of references to this document.

Good points on Virtualization, Databases, and most importantly a comparison of 4.x to 5.x.

Until then, give it a look.

What do y'all want to know about? What should I talk about here?

Sorry for the hiatus for the past week or so. Lots of good things happening at work keeping me busy, and rather than me going home for the weekend my wife came to town and we had a mini vacation.

Regular posts to resume tomorrow of this abbreviated week

... yes it works with BES (BPS too). While we haven't seen an official update from RIM in the compatibility matrix there are some updates (as of August 28, 2009); give it a read.

To read more about Exchange 2007 SP2 check out You Had Me At EHLO... : Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 Prerequisites