Consolidating Office 365 Tenants

[techie17]

I have 3 schools soon to join a MAT and all have office 365 tenants and I very keen to have all sites using the same office 365 system

 

Would the best thing be to create a new tenant under the MAT name, setup each schools domain on the new tenant and migrate everyone into that new tenant?

 

I was also kind of thinking about using a tenant of an existing school (that has the largest users and data) and move everyone else into that so if any one has had experience of consolidating tenants, it would be great to hear what the best way forward would be. All schools also have their own AD and have use documents in OneDrive

 

We also have a free school opening in 2018 which will also be under the MAT so again will be using O365.

 

Many Thanks

[djm968]

I would be very interested in the responses and outcome of this also. From what I've read I don't think it is possible to consolidate Office 365 tenants. Our MAT has three schools currently running Office 365 on two separate tenants and a further School to join following Google migration. One option I was looking at is to create a new tenant for the MAT and migrate all account to this new tenant. Edited March 10, 2017 by djm968

[danemillps]

I've just finished migrating all our schools over to 365 from various other providers. We have a single instance now, staff are really enjoying it. All our technicians are holding various training sessions, in the last couple of weeks we've started to make use of Skype for Business which is saving a tone of time instead of travelling to meetings.

 

The quickest way to migrate from one 365 tenant to another was using ediscovery to download all the PST mailboxes, i had to manually edit each one as they are downloaded into a "Primary Mailbox". After, i uploaded them to 365 and used the migration tools to import into the new mailboxes.

[techie17]

I've just finished migrating all our schools over to 365 from various other providers. We have a single instance now, staff are really enjoying it. All our technicians are holding various training sessions, in the last couple of weeks we've started to make use of Skype for Business which is saving a tone of time instead of travelling to meetings.

The quickest way to migrate from one 365 tenant to another was using ediscovery to download all the PST mailboxes, i had to manually edit each one as they are downloaded into a "Primary Mailbox". After, i uploaded them to 365 and used the migration tools to import into the new mailboxes.

 

So did you create a brand new tenant (eg: MAT name) and move each site across to the new tenant? did you also have OneDrive or Sharepoint stuff to move across? also im assuming you would have had to move one organistaion across at once because of mail delivery?

[apearce]

There are so many factors and we've had many chats with people recently about this - at least 4 in the last few months. Its so hard to write something in a single reply so I'm currently writing a white paper about different aspects, considerations around the main technologies such as Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive etc.

 

Things to remember are that if you move your domain name, you have to remove the whole domain and re-route email to another location until its back in 365 in a new tenant. You have to move mailboxes and anything that is shared externally will be lost and must be re shared again.

 

For anyone who want to chat about this on the phone, im more than happy to before I release my white paper, you might help me put more into it too. I'll make sure to post it when its complete.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Its an open invitation for the call so just PM if anyone is interested - promise no sell!

[snagrat]

Easiest way is to use CloudMigrator365. Doesn't cost that much and will move all emails and OneDrive data for you.

 

There will be hardly no email downtime during the migration either which is great

[nathan]

Easiest way is to use CloudMigrator365. Doesn't cost that much and will move all emails and OneDrive data for you.

 

There will be hardly no email downtime during the migration either which is great

 

I keep hearing that CloudMigrator365 doesn't cost that much but to migrate our 800 accounts it was going to cost around £6000!

 

I understand you'll have wage bills to pay if doing it all yourself but they are being paid regardless.

[snagrat]

I keep hearing that CloudMigrator365 doesn't cost that much but to migrate our 800 accounts it was going to cost around £6000!

 

I understand you'll have wage bills to pay if doing it all yourself but they are being paid regardless.

 

Then you are getting ripped off!

 

For 800 users it ain't gonna be cheap but you could question if some users could be skipped? i.e don't do Pupils

[nathan]

That what it says on their website, but I didn't ask for educational pricing but I bet they'll only take 20% max off. That was 800 staff, not a single pupil. We ended up using ediscovery and then using the tools to import. We did only have mail though

[dblight]

£4 per user we were charged recently for our migration using cloudmigrator365. Had to email them though for an educational discount

[danemillps]

Unfortunately that would still be £3400 for the email migration. Of course it's down to budget constraints, available man power etc

[techie17]

I know this maybe a stupid question, but if I have a a couple of schools that aren't part of a MAT but are work very closely together and the IT support is provided by the same person, can they still share the same tenant?

 

Their schools domains are linked to share files etc between sites. Not sure if Microsoft would allow this even though they use O365 for free!!

[snagrat]

I know this maybe a stupid question, but if I have a a couple of schools that aren't part of a MAT but are work very closely together and the IT support is provided by the same person, can they still share the same tenant?

 

Their schools domains are linked to share files etc between sites. Not sure if Microsoft would allow this even though they use O365 for free!!

 

Microsoft wouldn't care.

 

I wouldn't do it though incase the schools did join a MAT but not together

[djm968]

in the last couple of weeks we've started to make use of Skype for Business which is saving a tone of time instead of travelling to meetings.QUOTE]

 

I would be interested how this develops. I have suggested using Skype but I think its a change in mind-set and breaking down the barriers to using this technology that's required.

[Bob_the_Goon]

There are so many factors and we've had many chats with people recently about this - at least 4 in the last few months. Its so hard to write something in a single reply so I'm currently writing a white paper about different aspects, considerations around the main technologies such as Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive etc.

 

Things to remember are that if you move your domain name, you have to remove the whole domain and re-route email to another location until its back in 365 in a new tenant. You have to move mailboxes and anything that is shared externally will be lost and must be re shared again.

 

For anyone who want to chat about this on the phone, im more than happy to before I release my white paper, you might help me put more into it too. I'll make sure to post it when its complete.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Its an open invitation for the call so just PM if anyone is interested - promise no sell!

 

Hi Alex,

 

Just wondering if you managed to publish that whitepaper? I checked your website out but I couldn't find it.

[chaplic]

I would't start a new tenant, just go with the biggest tennant, as migration cross tennant is a pain so at least it's one less to migrate. If you can 'big bang' the other tenants into them with a likely outage of 48 hours or longer, then its a quick if risky. I am doing a tennant consolidation right now and the business has demanded it cannot be big bang and has to be per user.

 

 

So in AD A/ Tennant A I have established a new UPN and OU which syncs to Tennant B

 

To migrate a user, move them into that OU, change UPN, move mailbox (currently on prem), move onedrive, then reconfigure client with a bit of powershell. Bit of fiddling with mail forwarding and contact objects, job done. I cannot really say it's a panacea!