Why BES12 Monitoring is Important

The GSX Blog

Putting a new system in place comes with the responsibility of keeping it up and running, meeting the service-level agreement, and satisfying end users. For a BlackBerry administrator, all of these responsibilities are far more critical than putting the new system in place. As a best practice, we have seen software vendors help fine-tune, configure and even migrate users to the new platform.

Monitoring is another important piece of keeping systems in good health, and if not done correctly, it can cause the whole project to go haywire. Just imagine mobile devices connected to the new BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES)12 infrastructure but your setup is not on the mark so you don’t have a clue on what’s going on.

BlackBerry monitoring observes how the BES performs, checking whether or not BES services are being delivered without glitches, and verifying the BES’ availability and responsiveness to access requests from users.

Now, with ActiveSync dependency, it becomes even more critical to monitor BES12 and its components. According to a recent report, mobile usage now exceeds that of PCs and is the biggest shift since the Internet started.

All applications for either work or personal use now can be a part of BES12 system, making the life of both administrators and end- users easier to manage and more secure.

But, what if all these topics are not covered under monitoring and reporting? How can an administrator be sure going with BES12 was the right decision?

Knowing how much time it takes to reach the Active Sync URL external/internal may sound like the smallest part but it is actually the biggest piece in the whole puzzle that is the BES12 environment.

As part of BlackBerry’s long-term strategy, BES12 will enable organizations to develop enterprise-grade applications which can be quickly deployed to BlackBerry smartphones and other mobile devices. Among the improvements in BES12, what has our attention is:

Multiplatform support for Windows Phone 8 in addition to the already supported iOS, Android and BlackBerry 10 systems;
Proactive monitoring and systems tuning delivering a complete end-to-end perspective of the BES management platform;
Automated problem resolution

By performing periodic monitoring, BlackBerry administrators can detect performance degradations before users complain, and they can promptly initiate remedial measures.

GSX Monitor & Analyzer provides in-depth BlackBerry monitoring. GSX Monitor not only monitors the BES12 core services but also critical components like SQL DB size, whether the SQL role is up, the status of the SRP connection, etc.

Using GSX’s BlackBerry monitoring model, administrators can be proactively alerted to current and/or probable issues affecting the availability and overall performance of BES12 so they can take measures to avert the issues and maintain standard usage.

At the same time, the GSX Analyzer collects all of the data scanned by GSX Monitor in the background so administrators can have automatic reporting on the size, performance, number of devices, etc. in their BES12 environments.