Exchange to Gmail question

[robjduk]

I'm playing around with the idea of moving to gmail and have a question.

 

I plan on doing the change slowly so running both side by side for some time. Once the Google migration tool has run, does it automatically set the mailbox to forward to gmail or is their additional settings to perform? Do I need to add send connectors?

 

This is the bit which confuses me as I have never really messed with much exchange myself.

 

Thank you

[FN-GM]

It doesn't it just migrates data.

 

This how I do it

 

1. Setup Gmail mailbox

2. Change MX record to point to Gmail.

3. Run migration tools.

 

Any new data sent to the updated MX records will be merged with the old.

[robjduk]

but if I point MX records to gmail then how would email find its way to my exchange server? Say I just want to migrate 1 user to gmail but keep the rest onsite, how would that all work?

[Roberto]

but if I point MX records to gmail then how would email find its way to my exchange server? Say I just want to migrate 1 user to gmail but keep the rest onsite, how would that all work?

 

It wouldn't. Mail for a domain can only really be delivered to one place at a time.

 

Now that one place can possibly forward mail for certain mailboxes onwards, so the best answer to your wanting to trial gmail for just one user is to either give up on doing this with a live account and use a test user on a test domain or set up a forwarding rule on the exchange server to forward all mail for the trial user onwards.

 

This would let you trial the gmail front-end user experience but wouldn't really be representative of the entire experience of being a gmail user.

[robjduk]

thats a shame. Thanks for the advice and help.

[Primus]

Unless things have changed you can use dual delivery where all mail goes to both G Suite and then onto your legacy system.

[ITBadger]

Or you could use a different domain name for Google. We ran two email addresses for over a year before making the jump.

[derf]

We're currently going through this process, can send me a message and I can explain, short part is:

 

Create an alias in google for your domain, I choose g.mydomain.com

Keep your MX records pointing at Exchange while you test

Create a contact for each user using the alias, [email protected] becomes contact [email protected] (I've got some scripts to automate this)

Set forwarding and store in each mailbox on exchange (part of script above)

.....

Now all this would be fine if all your users were on Exchange and Google, however for us this isn't the case as we want pupils on G only (licenses, storage etc.)

 

Next step is switch the MX records and use dual delivery Google side for mail back to exchange (not sure how to stop it pinging it back to G with the forward though...)

The google account sync is easy enough, and used GAM to upload all AD photos (daily scheduled task)

Used SAML for auth with simplesamlphp all the examples were there for the taking.

Edited March 16, 2018 by derf

[derf]

Create a contact for each user using the alias, [email protected] becomes contact [email protected] (I've got some scripts to automate this)

Set forwarding and store in each mailbox on exchange (part of script above)

 

Just an update about this, just for reference sake. You don't need to create contacts and set the forwarding! This is a powershell command to do this for you!

 

Here's the script in full, replace the obvious parts with the relevant details (apologies for the code standard, I'm not very good with powershell)

param([string]$cn)
IF(!$cn)
{

[indent]echo "No parameters. Exiting script" [/indent]




[indent]exit[/indent]


}
$username = "DOMAIN ADMIN"
$password = "PASSWORD"
$secstr = New-Object -TypeName System.Security.SecureString
$password.ToCharArray() | ForEach-Object {$secstr.AppendChar($_)}
$cred = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $username, $secstr
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://FQDN OF MAIL SERVER/PowerShell/ -Authentication Kerberos -Credential $cred
Import-PSSession $Session
function MailForward($name)
{

[indent] $email=$name
$email+="@g.YOUR_DOMAIN";
Set-Mailbox -Identity $name -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true -ForwardingSMTPAddress $email[/indent]


}
MailForward($cn)
Remove-PSSession $Session

Edited April 13, 2018 by derf