Help with Exchange 2010 to O365

[timbo343]

I'm looking at moving our on-prem exchange to O365 however im unsure what steps to take. I've been doing a bit of reading but there are so many ways of doing it. Once ive got all staff over i just move the mx record to point to O365, i guess this is the cut over way of doing things.

 

I'd be happy for paid help if anyone out there knows of anyone who can support me during this.

 

I've got a couple of staff users sync'd to o365 for onedrive access and students already have email accounts on there.

 

Theres about 114gb to move up to O365.

 

Im thinking a cut over date then move the mailboxes rather than a hybrid setup.

 

There's one thing that's worrying me, we have GFI mailesstentials and it's been rock solid for years. Im a bit worried that moving to O365, we will end up getting loads of spam, im not too sure what O365 spam protection is like.

[snagrat]

Here is the way I would do it:

 

1) Sync AD with Office 365 to get the user's setup

2) disable sync, do not create any more users in AD for now

3) start Cutover migration. Everything will move over slowly and continue to sync with onsite exchange every 24 hours

4) Change MX records and enable AD sync and start using Office 365

 

Done it that way many times and works great.

 

Can't comment on the spam only to say that you can adjust the spam level within Office 365 to suit you

[mtillbrook]

Couple of things to watch out for there. I always find you have to tinker with the bad item limit as the move requests fail sometimes!

As exch2010 is aweful in some many ways, it's not ever as smooth as it should be! Don't try to do all the mailboxes at once, do a few at a time.

 

This may help also: 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

 

Enjoy!

[aguacate]

timbo343,

 

A good contact for exchange is Simon Butler over at sembee, https://www.sembee.co.uk , very knowledgeable.

 

For ease I would go hybrid, gives you more wiggle room and no downtime and a phased implementation, any reason why this is not an option?

[CraigM]

Having just finished my migration of Exchange 2007 to O365 2 weeks ago, I can say that it's not that tough. If you are bringing in existing mailboxes, the faster your upload speed, the better. I also learned that mailboxes that contain many thousands of items take longer to sync than a mailbox that has a few items but it gigantic. Similar experience to copying lots of small files over the network.

 

So far the SPAM protection has been amazing. Good couple of thousand bad IP's blocked and content filtering is doing a good job of not being too harsh, but not too lenient either. If I could get Directory Edge blocking running it would cut down even more, especially the automated mails from Facebook and co that are being delivered to now non-existent addresses.