Can I place my Exchange hybrid management server in Azure and use Azure Domain Services?

Reading Time: 2 minutes As some might know (although I and others have to repeat this regularly…), if you enable directory synchronization from your on-premises Active Directory (AD) and you migrate all you Exchange mailboxes to Exchange Online you still require an Exchange server to manage mail(box) objects. It is the only supported solution, even though some use third party tooling or ADSIedit. Luckily this managing Exchange server doesn’t require the same amount of resources compared to Exchange serves hosting actual production mailboxes. In

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Azure Active Directory Synchronization: Object Matching

Reading Time: 5 minutes This post is the fifth in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization and will cover Object Matching. Other posts have covered and will cover: Introduction, Part 1 Introduction, Part 2 Filtering, Part 1 Filtering, Part 2 Alternate Logon ID Object Matching and Joining Object matching or joining is relevant if you have multiple Active Directory (AD) forests you want to use for Directory Synchronization to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Previously with DirSync, it wasn't possible (or supported) to connect

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Azure Active Directory Synchronization: Filtering, Part 2

Reading Time: 5 minutes This post is the fourth in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization and will cover Filtering. Originally I've planned to make this one post, but in my opinion it became to large and complex thus again a part 2. Other posts have covered and will cover: Introduction, Part 1 Introduction, Part 2 Filtering, Part 1 Object Matching Alternate Logon ID In the previous post I discussed why and how to filter: Domain, Organizational Unit or Attribute based filtering. When to

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Azure Active Directory Synchronization: Filtering, Part 1

Reading Time: 6 minutes This post is the third in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization and will cover Filtering. Originally I've planned to make this one post, but in my opinion it became too large and complex thus again a part 2. Other posts have covered and will cover: Introduction, Part 1 Introduction, Part 2 Filtering, Part 2 Object Matching Alternate Logon ID   Why would you want to filter? In most cases the current Active Directory (AD) implementation contains a lot

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Azure Active Directory Synchronization: An Introduction, Part 2

Reading Time: 5 minutes This post is the second in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization, covering part 2 of an introduction. Previous and follow up posts have covered and will cover: Introduction, Part 1 Filtering, Part 1 Filtering, Part 2 Object Matching Alternate Logon ID As most organizations will not require FIM, I will focus my attention mostly on AADSync. Although DirSync is (unless features from AADSync are required) the first choice, it's deprecated, but more importantly: most concepts are still unchanged.

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Azure Active Directory Synchronization: An Introduction, Part 1

Reading Time: 3 minutes This post is a first in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization, covering part 1 of the introduction. Follow up posts will cover: Introduction Part 2 Filtering Part 1 Filtering Part 2 Object Matching Alternate Logon ID   Why you want have synchronization For those who don't work regularly with Office 365 or other Microsoft cloud services (like Azure, Exchange Online Protection), it can be a complex myriad of information to work through in order to find out what you exactly need. In

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Some things to do after leaving Windows Server 2003 (from an Exchange perspective)

Reading Time: 2 minutes Today the Exchange Team blog posted an article about upgrading the Domain Functional (DFL) level of your Active Directory environment away from Windows Server 2003 and the fact that raising the level might have some impact on your Exchange servers (and other applications). It is possible that they might not be able to authenticate. If you do run into issues after raising the DFL, the solution is either restarting the Kerberos Key Distribution Center service on all DC's or restarting all DC's

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From open source groupware solution Zarafa to Exchange: Part 2, Active Directory

Reading Time: 7 minutes See also Part 1: A New Beginning When using Zarafa there are several possible directory services you can use for authentication. I will restrict this post to situations relevant to Active Directory (AD) integration. Even if you did not use Active Directory (or Zarafa for that matter) previously, I believe this post still contains valuable information. Getting to know your current environment is key if you want to change it. If you migrate from one version of a product to

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From open source groupware solution Zarafa to Exchange: Part 1, A New Beginning

Reading Time: 3 minutes This blog series will describe my experiences and lessons learned from migrating the Zarafa Groupware solution to Microsoft Exchange, specifically Exchange Server 2013. I've done this twice now and although some things are quite obvious, there are some gotchas and it might be a daunting endeavor. A normal transition from Exchange to Exchange already requires good planning, but it is even more important when migrating from a third party solution that isn't supported by any available migration tool like Quest.

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Exchange Server 2013 Preview – Preparing Active Directory [Video]

Reading Time: < 1 minute Last Monday Exchange Server 2013 Preview Release (PR) was finally but rather silently released, together with all of the Wave 15 products (Office, Lync Server, SharePoint server). You can see the keynote here. Trying something new: I’ve made a video demonstrating which steps are necessary to prepare Active Directory for Exchange 2013 PR and how you can check whether this is completed successfully. I've added a download link for a WMV below (for use during a course or presentation for instance).

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