BES Express Installation on Exchange 2010 SP1 – MaxSessionsPerUser key?

So, “where has the MaxSessionsPerUser key setting in the microsoft.exchange.addressbook.service.exe.config file gone”, I hear you asking?

Research in Motion’s current (as of today) documentation for BES Express 5.0.3 tells us that we need to increase the maximum number of connections to the Address Book service in Exchange 2010 by modifying a key value in a file. To quote the document, they say:

By default, Microsoft® Exchange 2010 limits the maximum number of connections from the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express Express to the Address Book service to 50. To permit the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express Express to run, you must increase the number of permitted connections to a large value (for example, 100,000).

1. On the computer that hosts the Microsoft Exchange CAS server, in :\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin, in a text editor, open themicrosoft.exchange.addressbook.service.exe.config file.
2. Change the value of the MaxSessionsPerUser key to 100000.
3. Save and close the file.
4. Restart the Address Book service.

Now this as I have found, is no longer applicable to Exchange 2010 SP1 (and above of course). Apparently, Microsoft have moved this functionality to the Throttling policies in Exchange 2010 SP1. This means we’ll need to modify (or at least check) the Throttling policy that is applied to our “BesAdmin” user instead to ensure that certain settings are null / blank (i.e. meaning there is no limitation on them).

So if you notice you don’t have the MaxSessionsPerUser key in your file as per RIMs instructions, or you know straight off that you are on SP1, do the following to check using the Microsoft Exchange Management Shell.

1. Check the Throttling Policy called “BESPolicy” that you would have created earlier in the management shell as per the RIM documentation. Run: Get-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy

Your output will look like the following if the settings are correct (i.e. null):

2. Ensure that all the “RCA” Values listed are NULL – i.e. blank (refer to the screenshot in this post for a sample of the output I got when running the command). If they are not, then run the following:
3. (Run this if the RCA values are not NULL): Set-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy -RCAMaxConcurrency $null -RCAPercentTimeInAD $null -RCAPercentTimeInCAS $null -RCAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null

This “BESPolicy” should be the Throttling policy which is applied to your “BesAdmin” user, as per RIMs installation instructions for BES Express and shouldn’t really be applied to any other users or groups in your organization.

Following the above instructions should allow you to continue along with your BES Express installation alongside Exchange 2010 SP1. Hope this helps!