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Zenprise’s approach to managing BlackBerry as a service centers around a holistic end-to-end view of the BlackBerry messaging environment. Unlike traditional BlackBerry monitoring tools, Zenprise can:
1. Go beyond BES log files: Zenprise is the only BlackBerry monitoring solution that collects and analyzes data from the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and the Exchange, Active Directory, and DNS servers. A large number of BlackBerry user-facing issues are caused by problems occurring outside the BES server. Such issues are either never logged in the verbose logs maintained by the BES server, or find representation as ambiguous references across several log entries. Zenprise’s unique end-to-end approach ensures that BlackBerry users’ availability or performance problems are proactively detected and correlated to BlackBerry, Exchange, AD or DNS infrastructure issues. The collection and analysis of data outside the BES server allows Zenprise to accurately detect the true root cause of an issue. Consider the following examples:
a. Issue: Hung MAPI threads
Traditional monitoring system: Will report that hung MAPI threads found in log files.
The Zenprise Approach: Will report that RPC latency issues on Exchange Server are causing hung MAPI threads.
b. Issue: High number of messages delivered by rescans
Traditional monitoring system: Will report that log files indicate messages to users are being delivered by rescans
The Zenprise Approach: Will report that abnormal Exchange Server disk I/O performance is causing high number of rescans.
2. Go beyond the What – identifying the Why and the How: Whereas most monitoring solutions provide only event information – the What, Zenprise provides important answers to IT operations – what we call the Why and How. Consider the following examples:
a. Issue: BES cannot connect to Exchange server
Traditional monitoring system: Will report that BES cannot connect to the Exchange server (the what).
The Zenprise Approach: Will report that BES cannot connect to the Exchange server (the what) because the MAPI port is not registered on the Exchange server (the why). Restart the Information Store service on the Exchange server (the how).
b. Issue: Enterprise Activation failure
Traditional monitoring system: Will report that Enterprise Activation failed for user Jane Doe (the what).
The Zenprise Approach: Will report that Enterprise Activation failed (the what) because the Activation message was moved to the Deleted Items folder (the why). Investigate mailbox rules that are moving messages to Deleted Items folder (the how).
c. Issue: Mailbox access errors
Traditional monitoring system: Will report that a mailbox cannot be started by BES agents (the what).
The Zenprise Approach: Will report that a mailbox cannot be started by BES agents (the what) because the BES service account does not have Full Mailbox Access permissions (the why). Assign the BES service account Full Mailbox Access permissions(the how).
3. 57 Alerts by 9:00 a.m. – any plans for rest of the day? Traditional monitoring systems generate alerts for every instance of every symptom seen on a managed server. Many organizations often receive too many alerts, obfuscating the real problems amonst the noise of notifications. Such monitoring systems force IT operations to spend time managing alerts in order to find and troubleshoot real problems.
Rather than sending alerts for hundreds of symptoms seen across the environment, Zenprise will troubleshoot these symptoms by running diagnostic tests no different from the ones run by expert administrators. These tests allow Zenprise to rule out false positives, as well as automatically correlate several alerts into a single root cause. For example:
a. Issue: SRP Disconnects
Traditional monitoring systems: Will generate 30 SRP disconnect alerts.
The Zenprise Approach: Will generate a single Root Cause stating that SRP disconnects are caused by an invalid SRP authentication key. To get to this root cause, Zenprise automatically runs multiple diagnostics tests to ensure that the SRP address is valid, the SRP hostname can be resolved, the SRP key is valid, the BES Router configuration is correct, the necessary ports are not being used by another process, the RIM network is accessible via telnet tests or via BBSRPTest tests (utility from the BES Resource Kit). Based on the results from these multiple diagnostics tests, Zenprise is able to provide specific details on the root cause of the SRP disconnects, along with step-by-step resolution instructions on how to fix the issue. This saves IT operations from manually running these tests on their own to get to the root cause of SRP disconnect issues.
b. The Issue: BES server cannot access an Exchange mailbox
Traditional monitoring systems: Will generate 15 user not started alerts and 10 mailbox access alerts.
The Zenprise Approach: Will report single root cause – User mailbox moved to an Exchange mailbox Store where BES does not have adequate permissions. To get to this root cause, Zenprise identifies the new mailbox Store for the user, automatically checks Active Directory to see whether the BES service account has send as and receive as permissions for this individual user. If these permissions are not available at the user object, Zenprise then analyzes whether the service account has permissions at either the store or storage group level, and if so, whether inheritance is enabled. These automated tests ensure that IT receives a single, actionable alert.
4. Easy to use: One of the significant benefits of Zenprise is its remarkable ease of use. The end-to-end picture of the BlackBerry infrastructure – from the Exchange server to the BlackBerry handheld, allows administrators and IT helpdesk personnel to instantly pinpoint exactly where in the infrastructure the problem lies. A help desk operator unfamiliar with BES can use the product within minutes to identify and solve complex problems.
5. Built for the largest organizations: Zenprise is built to scale to the largest BlackBerry deployments. A single Zenprise server can support in excess of 150 BES servers. View sample list of Zenprise customers.
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