Zimbra Forums

Hi everybody, we are planning to upgrade our ZCS from version 6.0.x to the last 7.2.1 . Currently we are running a BES version 4.1, do we have to upgrade it to version 5.x to work with ZCS 7.2.1?

Thank you in advance.

I basically have the same question.
I have BES version 4.1 and ZCB 6.0.8 but we're running against ZCS 7.1.3p1. Before jumping from ZCS 6.0.8 to 7.1.3, I opened a case with Zimbra to make sure this would work/was supported. The answer I got was essentially "yes" but he also recommended upgrading to ZCB 6.5.7 if I could. I was going to on upgrade day, but stopped short of that part because I noticed the release notes for ZCB 6.5.7 only explicitly mentioned BES 5. It had already been a long day so I wasn't going to jump into that possibly Very Bad Day, and my tests on the BlackBerry worked against the older ZCB so I left it.
We now want to upgrade from ZCS 7.1.3 to ZCS 7.2.1, which is ever so slightly different from your situation, but the net effect is the same. I opened a case because I couldn't find any info in the forums. The answer I got is "Unfortunately we could not find any reference on this matter. Hence; I'm unable to say if ZCS 7.2.1 will or will not work with BES 5. Looks like your best bet is to test it. Is this possible?" I am unaware of how to test this ahead of time, especially since our test Zimbra server is unable to receive mail from the outside out of necessity anyway. My BES server is a VM, but even cloning that and doing a trial upgrade would only prove so much without possibly warping reality for production. (Also, we are planning to decommission our BES soon so I really have a stake in not putting much effort into upgrading it now.)
If you or anyone else reading this has ideas about how to test in advance (safely), I'd love to hear more. We have other reasons for needing to do the Zimbra upgrade soon and don't want the BES server to be the one thing that holds it back!

Literally three minutes after I posted, I got another Zimbra support response that you might find to be interesting, though not happy, news.

I had asked whether there are appreciable changes between ZCS 7.1.3 and ZCS 7.2.1 that he thought would affect the Blackberry connector.
Answer:

"The point here seem to be the interoperability between the Zimbra server and the Blackbery Connector. Zimbra 7.2.x has significant API changes that prevent it from working fine with versions of the connector prior to 7.2.1, so you have to upgrade connector from version 6.0.8 to 7.2.1, which requires BES 5 or later. Looks like you might want to wait until BES is decommissioned, then upgrade the Zimbra server."

[quote user="buttadee"]"The point here seem to be the interoperability between the Zimbra server and the Blackbery Connector. Zimbra 7.2.x has significant API changes that prevent it from working fine with versions of the connector prior to 7.2.1, so you have to upgrade connector from version 6.0.8 to 7.2.1, which requires BES 5 or later[/QUOTE]

Thank you for your answers: now it's confirmed that we have to upgrade BES to version 5.x if we want to upgrade to Zimbra 7.2.x ; alternatively, we can upgrade to version 7.1.x and keep our old BES, like you did. Now I will discuss about it with the guy that administrates BES, but I think that we will upgrade BES and Zimbra to the latest version...

You can setup a BES Express too (it means no need to pay for BES5 licences).

But you might have to re-provision all devices into the new BESx.