Exchange 2007/2013 co-existence and hybrid with Exchange Online

[iom100]

Hello all,

 

We've been attempting to build a 2013 hybrid server to move our mailboxes into the cloud for a few months.

 

We didn't really know what we were doing to begin with, so may have made some mistakes. Some expensive consultancy got us back on track, but we still can't get free/busy working between our mailboxes on-premises 2007 and cloud mailboxes. In a nutshell the Remote Connectivity Analyser fails in a variety of different ways depending on the combination of accounts used.

 

I could spell out here all the things I've tried but it would take me all week. Stuff now looks correct as far as I can tell. The number of configuration options for some of this stuff seems insane to me, but we only have quite a simple environment.

 

We've opened a case with Microsoft, and after one phone call we haven't got anything back. I think they are stumped as well but it would be nice to get a 'we're looking into it' message.

 

I think there's three options:

 

- Find and fix the problem at source. I think it's an authentication/authorisation thing somewhere. Lots of 401 and 403 errors in IIS logs.

- Remove Exchange 2013 completely and start again - I don't know how feasible this is.

- Do a cutover migration and somehow ensure that these issues won't impact future services.

 

Thoughts?

[kevin_lane]

I hope you manage to sort your problem as we are looking into this sort of thing for exchange 2007 and mo e to either exchange 2010 or 2013 but haven't quite made my mind up on the best possible way without loosing data lol

[iom100]

So on Thursday at 5:30pm I got an email reply from Microsoft asking for some more information. Sent off the required info before 9am on Friday and I'm still waiting for them to even acknowledge it. Waiting around for them to phone is getting very tedious.

 

Sadly, we're probably going to end up paying hundreds to another consultant to come and fix this up for us. I theory it should work fine, but something we've done has badly messed things up. My understanding is that there's very little chance of loosing data - but actually getting the complete functionality promised (ie onprem/cloud co-existence) is also pretty unlikely!

 

Does anyone from Microsoft lurk here?

[kevin_lane]

oh dear sorry to hear so what is the actual problem? have you made the transfer of the data or have you already done that ?

[iom100]

We've done some test migrations of mailboxes and that part works fine. Our main problems are around the use of 2013 as a hybrid server between on-premises users and cloud based users. The promised free/busy calendar sharing simply doesn't work, and it's pretty essential for us if we're going to be doing a staged migration rather than move everyone at once.

[kevin_lane]

im guessing you have already seen this then ?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/jj650274(v=exchg.150).aspx

[iom100]

Oh yes. And many pages like it.

[iom100]

For the record, this is now fixed. I eventually managed to get hold of a senior engineer at Microsoft. We spent about an hour and a half on the phone and eventually tracked it down to a problem with certificates. He then informed me that he wasn't allowed to tell me how to fix the problem as he could only support 'issues with the hybrid'.

 

A bit more work and research on my own and I worked out that some of the intermediate certificates for our 3rd party certificate were in the wrong store. This fixed the problem the engineer had identified. However, the remote connectivity tests still failed.

 

I had noticed that on the phone, the engineer had asked me to test the free/busy from the outlook web app. I did this again and it worked.

 

I reported my success back to Microsoft and they replied "There is no need to worry if the Remote Connectivity Test is failing."

 

So for anyone else with a similar problem - ignore the official, supported test tool that all the documentation tells you to use. Test with real clients and you might well waste a lot less time that I have done. You might be able to tell that I'm very pleased to have got this fixed, but a little bitter over wasted time!