BES Express installation thoughts

RIM released a new version of their free server side enterprise software in early 2010. There are some big benefits of the new version (Blackberry Enterprise Server Express 5.0 over Blackberry Professional Server Express). Three huge advantages to the new version - 1) you can install it on 64 bit systems, 2) you no longer need the BB Enterprise plan on your devices to use Blackberry Enterprise (though you need BB Enterprise plan to do wireless activation - without it, you need to do wired activation through the desktop software), and 3) the server license is free and so are all device licenses.

You can get the software here:
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/business/server/express/?iid=BESX_Software_landing

The install wasn't too different from the previous version of the server software, but what's great is that RIM made a great installation guide and one that included a great screen shot walk-through.

Here's the text guide:
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/14335/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server_Express_for_Microsoft_Exchange-Installation_and_Configuration_Guide--984521-0120054149-001-5.0.1-US.pdf

Here's the screen shot walk-throug:
https://www.blackberry.com/blackberrytraining/web/_content/indexExternal.html?cc=3731382d30323036335f42455358496e7374616c6c&cx=3230393930313031&cl=656e&cg=636f6e6669675f6c6f76655f707572706c652e786d6c

I was setting up BES Express on a Windows 2008 R2 machine with Exchange 2010 on it. The truth is that I had some trouble with the instructions. There were several things that the guide told me to do that I couldn't. I had trouble setting send as permissions to besadmin. I had trouble granting log on locally as a permission to besadmin (option was greyed out). I also couldn't get this command to work (I edited it as appopriate for my domain):
Add-ADPermission -InheritedObjectType User -InheritanceType Descendents -ExtendedRights Send-As -User "BESAdmin" -Identity "DC=,DC=,DC="

So in my case, luckily, I had already created another bedadmin account when my domain was a 2003 domain - but overall, minus the issues on this Exchange 2010 install, which I was luckily able to work around, the new version is a welcome change.