I haven't posted much lately. I the reason is simple, I had a large Blackberry project coming to IOC deployment and my new Blackberry (a Bold) decided that third party applications were toxic, and after loading some number of them it would turn into a brick. For a long time, the only information I could get was that it was the fault of the third party (ie me) application writers. Much angst and many sleepless nights later I find out there was a bug (well two bugs actually) with the Bold OS, one that causes random failures during reboot, made more frequent with more applications loaded not just mine; and one that prevents third party applications from launching Blackberry Maps. Being able to use the blackberry is a very important feature of my project. Launching Maps is cool, but useful. So first kudos given, albeit grudgingly, to RIM for finally getting around to fixing these bugs. I will recommend the latest release 4.6.0.418 / 4.6.0.247 (Multilanguage) because that is what I'm using.
Next, my shop is full of virtualization fans. So kudos to VMware for releasing ESXi for free use. If you are using data centre virtual servers ESXi is the tool to use.
USB is a big problem for virtualization. It was never designed for that, and it shows in the difficulty virtual servers have in trying to support it. VMware neatly solved this problem in ESXi by ignoring it. No USB support. But what do you do if you want to connect a USB device to your virtual client? There are many solutions out their but I decided to use USB over Network from FabulaTech. It worked flawlessly for everything I tried, which is more than I can say for USBAnywhere.
Then I had to upgrade my Blackberry OS (see above). The macine I use to do this is where I had the USB over Network server running. My Blackberry wasn't shared, so the Blackberry Desktop software was abel to connect and start the upgrade process. At a point in this process the Desktop software must reboot the the Blackberry, then connect to low level software to replace the operating system. Now, the USB over Network server has to grab each USB device as it is connected so that it knows what to do with it. Once that decision is made the server may release the device. Unfortunately this release tells the Blackberry to reboot. So the Desktop software can never replace the OS and the upgrade fails.
I was in a bit of a hurry so I justed un-installed the USB over Network server. This resulted in being sent to a web page to let FabulaTech know why I was removing their software. So I told them, did my upgrade and re-installed the server.
The next day I got an email from a product manager looking for more details. So kudos twice to FabulaTech for makeing good software, allowing a free trial, and standing behind what they make.
Last but certainly not least Zarafa. They claim all the advantages of Exchange at 50% the cost. From what I can see they are being far too modest. For one Zarafa runs on on Linxu using open source products like Postfix and MySQL. They provide a virtual appliance, so if you are using a VMware virtual server product installation is as simple as plugging in the appliance and making a few simple configuration changes. They even supply tools to support the Blackberry Enterprise Server. So if you, like me, have been wanting to set up and take advantage of a small Blackberry Enterprise Server, but don't know how, or don't want to deal with the issues of setting up and maintaining an Exchange server give Zarafa a look. They will aslo give you a free trial license to check it out. Their web mail client is well worth a test drive even if you don't need all the enterprise stuff.
Oh, and I got some good long cross country flights in the plane over the last few months.
