Going from On Prem Hybrid to Outlook365

[m0bov]

Hi guys, we are looking at moving from our Exchange 2016 on prem hybrid to Office 365. The mailboxes are stored on site and we find the whole system quite buggy and high maintenance. We also found the performance of Teams poor sometimes which is comes to using the calendar.

 

We've been recommended a move to our tenant for all e-mails. We don't want to have to deal with the mail server stopping, patching and all the other bugs and security risks that go with it.

 

Would this be a good move? The school wants to ensure the money they fund for this would mean we get a very reliable, secure and fast system. Anyone got experiences of this? How common is it for schools to use Office365 for Exchange?

 

Thanks.

[3s-gtech]

It is a good idea, really. You do potentially lose write-back to AD for certain mail attributes that Hybrid gives you, as well as certain relay features.

[jnfarmer]

We got shot of our hybrid Exchange set up a couple of years ago now. We still use AAD Connect to sync our users, other than that, it's all managed in the cloud. Apart from having to Google what AD attributes map to Exchange Online, it works perfect.

[chaplic]

Ive been working with Exchange on prem since version 4 in the mid 90s and in that time have worked on projects touching hundreds of thousands of mailboxes... I would say go O365 for email. It still requires effort on your part to make it secure and (to a lesser extent) reliable, but its orders of magnitude less complex.

 

The only downside is that it's not 'build and forget'. Your current email system will be pretty much the same as when it was setup. O365 is always changing, not always for the better so you need a plan to keep on top of that.

[m0bov]

We use Salamander as well and of course SIMS. We have AD all on prem, I tend to need to edit the proxy address attribute from time to time I think. Can't think of what else.

[chaplic]

We use Salamander as well and of course SIMS. We have AD all on prem, I tend to need to edit the proxy address attribute from time to time I think. Can't think of what else.

None of that needs to change, that's the beauty of it.

 

I was working for an organisation consolidating it's IT operation and moving mailboxes to the cloud.. one IT manager was not happy and finding reasons why his mailbox couldn't be moved to the cloud. It was moved without his knowledge and he didn't notice for weeks

[psydii]

Keeping the exchange server just for management shouldn't be that big of a deal? firewall it off so it can only communicate with office365 servers and your local AD and management IPs, and it shouldn't need any further care? Other than to update it and its certificate I haven't given ours any thought* for a couple of years now.

 

 

*Any problems that crop up only impact my team, and because they are well known (log files, certificate, updates) it only takes a few a few minutes for us to fix it, but crucially, at our leisure. All the important customer facing bits are managed by 365.

 

We keep ours because I don't want the junior techs messing with hand crafting AD attributes via aduc or powershell, and the occasional on-prem system that needs SMTP / depreciated authentication systems.

[MatthewL]

I'd get rid of any on site mail servers not worth the hassle, get it all in the cloud, if you need a relay there are other tools that can be used for it if you cannot communicate direct with O365.

 

Why keep something on your network that needs updates etc when it can be al managed in the cloud?

[m0bov]

Sounds good, yes that's what I'm thinking, if Exchange goes down here, its the end of the world. Thanks for the info.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

None of that needs to change, that's the beauty of it.

 

I was working for an organisation consolidating it's IT operation and moving mailboxes to the cloud.. one IT manager was not happy and finding reasons why his mailbox couldn't be moved to the cloud. It was moved without his knowledge and he didn't notice for weeks

 

 

Lol!!!

[tri_94]

Hi there just wondering what you mean't by "We also found the performance of Teams poor sometimes which is comes to using the calendar." As have issues with Teams on the calendar saying "Can't sync right now"

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Hi guys, we are looking at moving from our Exchange 2016 on prem hybrid to Office 365. The mailboxes are stored on site and we find the whole system quite buggy and high maintenance. We also found the performance of Teams poor sometimes which is comes to using the calendar.

 

We've been recommended a move to our tenant for all e-mails. We don't want to have to deal with the mail server stopping, patching and all the other bugs and security risks that go with it.

 

Would this be a good move? The school wants to ensure the money they fund for this would mean we get a very reliable, secure and fast system. Anyone got experiences of this? How common is it for schools to use Office365 for Exchange?

 

Thanks.

[chaplic]

If your mailboxes are on prem, the calendar integration doesn't 'just work', you need to setup a connection and allow oauth auth if I recall. Get em moved to O365 ;-)