Exchange On Prem to Office 365

[lmrogers]

Good afternoon,

 

I'm considering migrating our current on premise Exchange 2016 to Office 365 Exchange Online.

 

Has any one got any experience or thoughts on this? Is there anything I should consider about this migration?

 

Thanks,

[timbo343]

I did it, took a lot of planning and i moved from ex2010. I shall see if i can dig out the guides that helped me. The biggest part for me was getting the data over. I did it via cutover rather than hybrid and it went well. Edited October 20, 2017 by timbo343

[timbo343]

Here's a few threads to get you started:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/186201-exchange2010-o365-cutover-migration.html

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/187735-office365-address-book-policies.html

[timbo343]

https://www.itpromentor.com/365-cutover/

 

Address Book Policies in Exchange Server « MSExchangeGuru.com

[lmrogers]

Thats great I will have a look through those. In terms of licensing how was that done? We currently have Office 365 A1 for faculty and students which includes the Exchange service. Would this be enough for us to complete this migration or would I need to purchase another license?

[timbo343]

Thats great I will have a look through those. In terms of licensing how was that done? We currently have Office 365 A1 for faculty and students which includes the Exchange service. Would this be enough for us to complete this migration or would I need to purchase another license?

 

That's all we give them at the moment and starting to push out OneDrive which is a slow process as things keep getting in the way.

[timbo343]

Whilst tidying my desk, i found the following guides:

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Ways-to-migrate-multiple-email-accounts-to-Office-365-0a4913fe-60fb-498f-9155-a86516418842

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Cutover-migration-to-Office-365-9496e93c-1e59-41a8-9bb3-6e8df0cd81b4?ui=en-US&rs=en-GB&ad=GB

 

GAL Segmentation in Office 365, Address Book Policy Routing | Run On Azure

 

Cutover Migration from Exchange 2016 to Office 365 (Part 1)

Cutover Migration from Exchange 2016 to Office 365 (Part 2)

 

How to Implement Address Book Policies in Office 365/Exchange 2013/2016 Effectively – Part 3 - CareExchange.in

 

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ukeducloud/2013/04/15/alumni-address-book-policy-in-office-365-education/

 

https://jaapwesselius.com/2017/05/15/moving-from-exchange-2010-to-office-365/

https://jaapwesselius.com/2017/05/16/moving-from-exchange-2010-to-office-365-part-ii/

 

Hope all these helps.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Whilst tidying my desk, i found the following guides:

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Ways-to-migrate-multiple-email-accounts-to-Office-365-0a4913fe-60fb-498f-9155-a86516418842

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Cutover-migration-to-Office-365-9496e93c-1e59-41a8-9bb3-6e8df0cd81b4?ui=en-US&rs=en-GB&ad=GB

 

http://www.runonazure.com/gal-segmentation-in-office-365/

 

http://www.mustbegeek.com/cutover-migration-from-exchange-2016-to-office-365-part-1/

http://www.mustbegeek.com/cutover-migration-from-exchange-2016-to-office-365-part-2/

 

http://www.careexchange.in/how-to-implement-address-book-policies-in-office-365exchange-20132016-effectively-part-3/

 

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ukeducloud/2013/04/15/alumni-address-book-policy-in-office-365-education/

 

https://jaapwesselius.com/2017/05/15/moving-from-exchange-2010-to-office-365/

https://jaapwesselius.com/2017/05/16/moving-from-exchange-2010-to-office-365-part-ii/

 

Hope all these helps.

[lmrogers]

I'm trying to run the Hybrid Setup Wizard and am hitting a problem. I click on Verifying Domain and it just runs through the verifying stage but the foes back to asking to click to verify but then moves the domain onto Adding Federated Domain but it doesn't move on. Did you ever encounter this issue?

 

Thanks

[AlanD]

Don’t forget that you will still either need to run exchange locally as well ..or an smtp relay.. to cater for local devices that “send” emails .... like photocopiers, printers, etc.

[snagrat]

Don’t forget that you will still either need to run exchange locally as well ..or an smtp relay.. to cater for local devices that “send” emails .... like photocopiers, printers, etc.

 

Depending on the age of the device. Newer units can send direct via Office 365

[lmrogers]

Initially I'm just going to be looking at 365 and exchange online to be hosting the mailboxes, eventually I'd like to remove the on premise server completely and have just and smtp relay I guess for a few MFD's we have. I'm just having the problem at the minute with verifying the domain with the TXT token. I have done a TXT record check and can see the token has propagated but the wizard still doesn't seem to verify the domain, but it doesn't show any errors either.

[timbo343]

I took the plunge and did cut iver migration over a weekend. When you're setting up how you'd like to move mail across, cut over maybe greyed out, there is a way to ungrey it by removing the AD sync for a short time, selecting the option then applying the AD sync again.

With cut over you can sync the mailboxes, this happens about every 24 hours. Once you move your MX record thats when users will start using Office365. For me, this was the 2nd weekend in the summer holidays.i had already setup and tested a lot of the syncs and that weekend was a full on weekend for me.

 

As for the copiers, we have a shared mailbox that we use for authentication on to O365 and then a group called 'send as' so users can scan and email documents to themselves. Every few days a PS script is run that connects to O365 Exchange to assign this Send As group to any new users that may have been created.

 

Is can be hard work to get it all set up as there's a lot of planning the different scanerios to think about but get them written down, test each one and write the result, that way you'll be sure you are bringing it all together.

 

Just out of interest, where in county are you?

[timbo343]

I'm trying to run the Hybrid Setup Wizard and am hitting a problem. I click on Verifying Domain and it just runs through the verifying stage but the foes back to asking to click to verify but then moves the domain onto Adding Federated Domain but it doesn't move on. Did you ever encounter this issue?

 

Thanks

I just added our domain to the existing tennant that we have in Office365 and everything worked. It was designed for students at the time so our, so our onmicrosoft.com name is wrong but that can't be changed - we just have to live with it.

[lmrogers]

I took the plunge and did cut iver migration over a weekend. When you're setting up how you'd like to move mail across, cut over maybe greyed out, there is a way to ungrey it by removing the AD sync for a short time, selecting the option then applying the AD sync again.

With cut over you can sync the mailboxes, this happens about every 24 hours. Once you move your MX record thats when users will start using Office365. For me, this was the 2nd weekend in the summer holidays.i had already setup and tested a lot of the syncs and that weekend was a full on weekend for me.

 

As for the copiers, we have a shared mailbox that we use for authentication on to O365 and then a group called 'send as' so users can scan and email documents to themselves. Every few days a PS script is run that connects to O365 Exchange to assign this Send As group to any new users that may have been created.

 

Is can be hard work to get it all set up as there's a lot of planning the different scanerios to think about but get them written down, test each one and write the result, that way you'll be sure you are bringing it all together.

 

Just out of interest, where in county are you?

 

Morning,

 

Yeah I'm just going to try and migrate all the users mailboxes over first, then look at the whole MFD sending to 365 before changing the DNS, so I'll basically have an on prem exchange managing mail flow with all the mail hosted on 365 then setup something to remove the on prem exchange. I'm still struggling to get the domin verified through the exchange hybrid configuration wizard though.

 

I'm based in Kent.

 

Thanks,

[timbo343]

Morning,

 

Yeah I'm just going to try and migrate all the users mailboxes over first, then look at the whole MFD sending to 365 before changing the DNS, so I'll basically have an on prem exchange managing mail flow with all the mail hosted on 365 then setup something to remove the on prem exchange. I'm still struggling to get the domin verified through the exchange hybrid configuration wizard though.

 

I'm based in Kent.

 

Thanks,

 

My thoughts on this would be to get the mailboxes over first, sort out the external DNS and then look at the MFDs.

 

It sounds to me like you're opting for the Hybrid setup rather than the cut over migration. I cannot comment on the hybrid setup as i thought the cutover option was better - set a date and work to it. Once all the mailboxes are over then the work to get everything else setup begins and users can use their O365 account whilst you're setting things up.

 

Have you made sure the AD settings are correct? By this i mean all mailbox users have the @*yourexternaldomain* configured in Account > User Logon Name and the Email address field in AD is populated too.

 

Do some tests with AAD Connect.

 

The more testing you can do the better prepared you will be when you come to move your exchange over.

 

I must stress though, make sure you have plenty of bandwidth. We saw our 30mb line get eaten up by all the traffic, however i do think that is down to Office16 downloading all the templates for the office applications when users login.

 

The domain bit for me was straight forward. You might have already read this article: Adding and Verifying a Domain for the NEW Office 365 | Office 365 Technical Support Blog

 

Ah! Kent is a bit far from where i am!

Edited October 30, 2017 by timbo343

[lmrogers]

Yeah, so I'm going for a hybrid first so that I can gradually migrate the mailboxes and then I will cut off and migrate fully to Office 365 later on. I have ensured that AD is correct for the users so that they are USERNAME@EXTERNALDOMAINNAME.

 

I am slightly concerned about the internet bandwidth, we have a 100MB dedicated lease line at the minute on a 1gig fibre bearer so it could be increased.

 

I have verified the domain. Doing some more testing and digging around today though I think I have found a problem which is causing the Hybrid Configuration Wizard not to progress.

 

 

This is on Exchange 2016. Looking around one of the solutions was to re-run the Exchange setup /prepareAD which I have done but that still has not resolved the issue. Has anyone come across this before?

 

Ah, where abouts are you based?

 

Cheers,

[lmrogers]

So I have got the hybrid setup and domain all verified. I just need to migrate now. I'm thinking of using cut off migration to migrate all the mailboxes and then at some point soon once migration has completed make the DNS changes and look to decomission the on prem exchange. I'm going to try and configure an SMTP relay with IIS for out MFD devices, are there any other issues that could cause me a problem?

[timbo343]

So I have got the hybrid setup and domain all verified. I just need to migrate now. I'm thinking of using cut off migration to migrate all the mailboxes and then at some point soon once migration has completed make the DNS changes and look to decomission the on prem exchange. I'm going to try and configure an SMTP relay with IIS for out MFD devices, are there any other issues that could cause me a problem?

 

In regards to the MFD devices i had to configure a relay for our students as they have their own subdomain but staff just worked when using the OnPrem exchange server. When i moved everything over, i created a specific mailbox for MFD devices so they could authenticate with O365. I had to had this account to a "Send As" group in Office365 and assign the "Send As" group to all mailboxes so it could send on behalf of the user - that;s how our staff scan and email documents to themselves.

[lmrogers]

OK, I'll have a look at that.

 

I'm still running into issues, this isn't going as smoothly as I'd have liked. Now when I'm trying to setup a migration endpoint I'm getting an error message about an Object reference not set to an instance.

 

If anyone could help on this that would be great!

 

Thanks,

[lmrogers]

I have finally got all the mailboxes migrated using Remote Move Migration.

 

I am looking at now removing the on prem Exchange, I have changed the DNS records and now just need to turn off the old Exchange and get Outlook connecting to Office 365 rather than local Exchange. Do you guys have any tips or good links for this?

 

Cheers

[timbo343]

If i were you, id leave exchange on for a few months, mine is still running, switched off at times but it needs uninstalling.

 

Ours just connected to office365 after checking with everyone. A couple had to to be reconfigured but it just picked everything up.

[lmrogers]

Okay, have you removed the hybrid configuration at all yet or just left it all switched off?

[timbo343]

We never had the hybrid configuration, i think i've done it slightly differently, i did the cut over migration route rather than hybrid. I think @NorthernNoel might be able to help as i think he did the hybrid route.

[lmrogers]

Oh right, yeah, I setup the hybrid then used remote move migration. With the server shutdown the mailflow and everything seems to be working just fine. Just got to look at getting my MFDs and applications sending mail now.

[timbo343]

That's the interesting part now 🙂.

MFDs, eclipse, papercut, spiceworks for us all have office365 service accounts or shared mailedboxes.