This topic has the details on Hybrid Configuration and the Exchange Online related Migrations
How you will run the Hybrid Configuration Wizard?
We can download the HCW tool from ECP console or from Microsoft website https://aka.ms/HybridWizard we need the Exchange Organization Admin credential and Office 365 Global Admin permission to run the Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
What are the Exchange Hybrid Configuration features?
Below are the Hybrid Configuration feature
- Free/Busy Sharing: Free/Busy sharing enables calendar sharing between on-premise and Exchange Online users.
- MailTips: Both On-Premise and Exchange online senders can adjust messages they are composing to avoid NDR between organization.
- Online Archiving: Exchange Online organization hosts archive mailbox for both on-premise and Exchange Online users
- Outlook on the web redirection: Outlook on the web redirection provides single, common URL to access both on-premise and Exchange online mailboxes.
- Exchange Active Sync Redirection: Exchange ActiveSync clients will automatically have reconfigured when mailbox moved to Exchange online.
- Secure Mail: Secure mail enabled secure message delivery between the on-premise and Exchange Online organization via TLS protocol. On-Premise Exchange and Exchange Online mutually authentication through digital certificate subjects and email headers.
- Message Tracking to understand the mail flow from On-Premises Exchange to Exchange Online
- Mailbox on boarding to Office 365 and off boarding to On-premise Exchange.
Where you will find the Hybrid Configuration Wizard logs?
Hybrid Configuration Wizard writes many information about the existing On-Premise Exchange Configuration and the changes done to implement the Hybrid Deployment. You can find the logs at this location %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Exchange Hybrid Configuration from which Server the Hybrid Configuration Wizard was configured.
What are the benefits of Hybrid Configuration?
Interviewer wants to know whether you understand the features of HCW. Start with below
- Exchange On-Premise and Exchange Online users can share the free/busy information
- Secure Mail flow using Hybrid Configuration where the email routes via Exchange Online Protection
In addition, you can answer all the points under this question – What are the Exchange Hybrid Configuration features?
What is Hybrid Exchange Environment?
Hybrid Exchange Environment is the Cross forest Exchange deployment having mailboxes in On-Premise Exchange Infrastructure and also in Office 365 but both the users appear to have Same Email domain alias and other Exchange functionality.
What is the use of OAuth Authentication between Exchange and Exchange Online?
OAuth is an Authentication Protocol enables MRM, Exchange In-Place Discovery and Exchange In-Place Archiving on Cross Exchange Forest like Exchange Hybrid Environment. Hybrid Configuration Wizard will configure OAuth only when the environment is having Exchange 2013 or later. On a mixed environment with Exchange 2010, HCW will not prompt for OAuth configuration but we can follow a series of steps to implement it manually.
How the free/busy sharing works between Exchange On-Premise and Exchange Online?
Implementing Federated sharing allow users in Exchange On-Premise to see the free/busy information for the user in Exchange Online. Running the Hybrid Configuration Wizard will configure the Organization Relationship with Exchange Online which helps the free/busy sharing working between On-Premise Exchange & Office 365.
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What is federated sharing and federated delegation?
Federated Sharing (Organization Relationship) in Exchange 2013 allows users in Exchange 2013 or later organization to share free/busy information with other Exchange Organization. It provides granular control on the calendar sharing.
Federated Delegation formally known as Federated sharing in Exchange 2010. Federated delegation uses the Microsoft Federation Gateway, a cloud-based service offered by Microsoft, as the trust broker between your on-premises Exchange 2010 organization and other federated Exchange 2010 organizations.
How to Configure Federated Sharing and Federated Delegation? – Low Priority
If we want to enable free busy sharing between Exchange 2013 organizations, then configuring Federated Sharing helps to achieve it.
- Create a Federation Trust (between a Microsoft Exchange 2013 organization and the Azure Active Directory authentication system)
- Creation an Organization Relationship
- Create a Sharing Policy
- Create Autodiscover Public DNS Record
If we want to enable Free Busy sharing between an Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2010 Organization, Federated Sharing enabled at Exchange 2013 Organization and Federated Delegation to be done at Exchange 2010 SP2 side. Below the Federated Delegation steps done on Exchange 2010 Organization
- Create a Federation Trust (between a Microsoft Exchange 2010 organization and the Microsoft Federation Gateway)
- Create TXT records for Federated Delegation
- Configure the domain for Federation Delegation
- Create CNAME record for Autodiscover
- Create an Organization Relationship
What are the mailbox migration options available for Office 365 migration?
Cutover Migration – Migrate all mailboxes at once. We can use this type of migration if you’re customer is running Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, or Exchange 2013
Staged Migration – Migrate mailboxes in batches. Staged migration can be used with Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 customers
Hybrid Migration – Migrate mailbox using an integrated Exchange Server and Office 365 environment. Hybrid migration is used when you need to maintain both on-premises and online mailboxes for your customer while you gradually migrate users and email to Office 365
IMAP Migration – IMAP migration used to migrate email from Gmail, Exchange, and other email systems that support IMAP migration. When you migrate the user’s email by using IMAP migration, only the items in the users’ inbox or other mail folders are migrated. Contacts, calendar items, and tasks can’t be migrated with IMAP, but they can be by a user.
IMAP migration also doesn’t create mailboxes in Office 365. We need to create a mailbox for each user before you migrate their email.
What is the different between Staged Migration and Hybrid Migration?
Staged migration is used when using Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010, we will not get full Hybrid experience when we do staged migrations for example Out Of Office set on a mailbox and if migrated to Office 365, it will not carry forward the OOO settings. Outlook Anywhere is used to migrated the mailbox migration from Exchange On-Premise to Office 365.
Hybrid Migration provides full hybrid experience. It uses MRS Proxy Migration endpoints (EWS) for migration.
What is a Hybrid Configuration?
Hybrid Configuration deployment offers organizations the ability to extend the on-premise exchange experience and administrative control they have with their existing on-premise exchange organization to the cloud. Hybrid deployment provides seems look and feel of a single Exchange organization between an on-premises Exchange organization and Exchange Online in Office 365. Hybrid configuration serve as an intermediate step to move completely to an Exchange Online Organization.
You are an IT administrator for a company with On-Premise Exchange deployment, your manager asked you to implement Hybrid Exchange Infrastructure, and you need to keep half the mailbox in Exchange Online. What are the prerequisites to have Hybrid Exchange Deployment and in which order you deploy those prerequisites? – Important Question.
· On-Premise exchange organization prepared so that we have supported version of Exchange server for Hybrid Configuration. If we Exchange 2007 then we need to run the Hybrid Configuration from an Exchange 2013 Server, though it is supported in Exchange 2010. Latest Cumulative update or N (latest update)-1 update to be installed in Exchange Server.
· All the default Roles to be available in the Exchange Organization, for example if it is Exchange 2010, Mailbox, Hub Transport and Client Access and If Exchange 2013, Mailbox and Client Access Role to be installed on the same server.
- Office 365 Subscription that supports Directory Synchronization required.
- All the custom domains used in your On-Premise added and verified in Office 365.
- Install and configure Azure AD Connect and enable the Directory Synchronization. In parallel, configure ADFS and ADFS Proxy servers to have Single Sign On Experience.
- Validate the Autodiscover record points to On-Premise Exchange 2013 client access server.
- Add the Office 365 organization in the On-Premise Exchange Admin center.
- Install and assign Exchange service to a valid digital certificate from a third party provider.
- Deploy edge server for Hybrid Secure Mail flow and configure Edge Sync, which is necessary.
- Run the Hybrid Configuration Wizard
- Do a pilot mailbox move and validate all the functionalities are working before the mass rollout.
hat is Hybrid Configuration Object? How to identify the feature enabled on Hybrid environment?
Hybrid Configuration Wizard will create a Hybrid configuration object in AD with the desired state configuration. All the information related to Hybrid Configuration will be stored on this Object.
To view the feature enabled, we can run the get-hybridconfiguration cmdlet to see the features.
