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We are currently helping a company with 6 branch offices migrate everything to M365, one office at the time. 400 users
They currently use an on-premise Active Directory with an old Exchange 2010 server. This is a Hybrid setup with the Azure AD connect tool syncing the accounts on-premise AD to a single M365 tenant.
One branch office at the time, we are moving the mailboxes to Exchange Online over a period of weeks, in the meantime they still use RDS servers in the local AD to access their files. After all email has been migrated successfully, we will be moving their files to Teams/Sharepoint. This eliminates the use of their RDS platform.
After that step completes, technically, they don't need the old server farm anymore. They will be moving away from on-premise RDS servers, exchange and active directory.
The million dollar question I have is this: When they work "in the cloud" eventually, is there a way to completely remove the Hybrid configuration and make M365 the leading management system? We are trying to find out if we can configure the system in a way that we can literally get rid of all server hardware and make it a cloud-only tenant and fully manage everything online. Right now we have to manage everything through the old AD and Exchange and let it sync...
yes, you can disable the sync and convert these to cloud accounts when the time comes and remove the Exchange Hybrid:
Remove hybrid:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/decommission-on-premises-exchange
Disable Sync/ Convert to Cloud Users:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/438604/disable-ad-cloud-sync-and-single-sign-on
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Hi @Caspar - ABO ,
When they work "in the cloud" eventually, is there a way to completely remove the Hybrid configuration and make M365 the leading management system?
Yes. 100% agree with Andy that you can definitely remove the Hybrid configuration when you are ready. And below is an additional article in terms of Exchange 2010 hybrid which hopefully you can find it helpful:
Decommissioning your Exchange 2010 servers in a Hybrid Deployment
By the way, if Andy's post is useful, you can accept his reply as answer so that others experiencing the same thing can easily reference this! Should you have any extra questions, feel free to post back.
Thanks for commenting. At this moment we are in the stage where we have setup Exchange Hybrid to the M365 tenant. The only thing we have at this point is that all user accounts are synced to M365. At this moment we don't have anyone actively working in M365 yet. So the tenant has licenses and the correct accepted domains. Today and yesterday I have tried to use migration to move mailboxes from on-premise to M365 but I'm running into a lot of weird issues. I have done this in the past with the exact same settings but now it suddenly won't work. The migration batches keep failing even though I'm sure it's all setup correctly. It's painfully slow as well.
We also realize that the Hybrid setup requires the old AD and Exchange to keep operating to create new users and move their mailboxes to M365 once created. The customer has a desire to be able to create and manage users themselves but they have no access to the "old" server platform that we manage. This specific company that we are assisting wants to build a completely new folder structure and setup Teams and move their mailboxes and data to m365 eventually.
I am thinking that it might be better to disable/remove the AD sync now and remove the Hybrid setup completely and then start off with a fresh tenant where we will be able to create the users online and not rely on an old Exchange 2010 server that is needed for syncing. Who knows how long Microsoft still supports the sync..
Creating the users online will take more time but this way you assure that the tenant has no relation to an old outdated system that we desperately want to get rid of.
So my question now is would if be possible at this early stage to remove the Hybrid setup completely while we have no users actively using m365? If there is a possibility that the current users already synced to m365 can remain there and be converted to "in the cloud" in stead of "synced from active directory" that would make things way easier for us.. Hope you have some tips, maybe we can use the suggested links provided earlier.
Hi @Caspar - ABO ，
We also realize that the Hybrid setup requires the old AD and Exchange to keep operating to create new users and move their mailboxes to M365 once created.
As indicated in the aforementioned two links, if you don't need to manage users from on-premises and no longer have a need for directory synchronization or password synchronization, it would be fine to go ahead decommissioning the on-premises Exchange server. See this link or refer to the first scenario in this link for more details.
So my question now is would if be possible at this early stage to remove the Hybrid setup completely while we have no users actively using m365?
If there are more than 150 mailboxes, Hybrid is still the recommended option according to this document. But if for some reasons you prefer using other methods like cutover to migrate to the cloud, the answer is yes, you can remove the Hybrid setup at this stage. Below are the basic steps for reference.
By the way, it's highly recommended to go through the links provided earlier for more information about moving from hybrid to cloud.
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Hi @Caspar - ABO ,
I am writing to see how everything is going on with this thread.
If the replies above are helpful, do you mind accepting it as answer? This can be beneficial to others who read this thread. If you still have further concern on this, please feel free to let us know.