Many organizations have started using Exchange Online at some point with Exchange 2010 under Hybrid to take advantage of most of the features available with Office 365.
But as we all know that Exchange 2010 is coming to its end of life, so everyone must migrate their Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2016 at some point before it reaches its end date.
Many organizations use Hybrid configuration for easy management of Active Directory users to Office 365 and mail flow for internal relay from all MFD’s & on-prem applications.
In this article, I have covered the migration from Hybrid Exchange 2010 to Hybrid Exchange 2016.
- Add Exchange Server 2016 to your environment.
- Exchange 2016 prerequisites
- Prepare AD
- Install the following software:
- Active Directory schema update
- Prepare Active Directory
- Refresh Directory Schema – AD Connect
- Installation of Exchange 2016
- Activate the server using a free hybrid license key
- Update the Service Connection Point (SCP)
- Import the Exchange UCC certificate
- Update Exchange Virtual Directories & Outlook Anywhere settings
- Add anonymous SMTP relay connector
- Update DNS and firewall rules, and update send connectors
- Uninstall the Legacy Exchange Server
- Run the new hybrid configuration wizard
Part-1 covers Exchange 2016 installation with Hybrid license activation.
Exchange 2016
Exchange 2016 Prerequisites
Prepare AD
Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS
Check the
Prerequisites for Exchange 2016 Mailbox servers on Windows Server 2016
Install-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface, RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt, RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell, Web-Mgmt-Console, Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation, RSAT-ADDS
Reboot the server.
Install the following software in order.
- .NET Framework 4.7.1
- Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB3206632
- Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2012
- Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2013
- Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 4.0, Core Runtime 64-bit
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=kb3206632
Reboot the server.
Active Directory schema update
In normal cases, we will run the
setup.exe /PrepareSchema /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms command to prepare the schema but as we are already using a hybrid active directory instead of AD Schema, we will prepare a Tenant Organization config. For that, we need to download the Tenant Organization config from Exchange Online. So, connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.
Log into your O365 tenant - Run.
Get-OrganizationConfig | Export-clixml -Path c:\script\0365oconfig.xml
Perform Active Directory schema update by running the command from the path you’ve downloaded the Exchange Server 2016 installation files from.
To prepare the Tenant Organization config, run the following command on PowerShell.
Setup /PrepareAD /TenantOrganizationconfig:C:\0365oconfig.xml /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms
Prepare Active Directory
Prepare Active Directory by running the following command.
setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms
Note
User needs to be a member of the Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins group.
Refresh Directory Schema – AD Connect
Once your AD Schema is prepared for new Exchange 2016, you will start receiving emails from
[email protected] saying Unable to update this object in Azure Active Directory.
This is because of the newly introduced Attributes. AADConnect will not recognize that change. Changes that are made to the source directory schema after the Connector has been created are not automatically reflected. We do have a manual way to force a refresh of the schema from within the MIISClient tool, which is too much setting from the back-end.
Simply re-run the AADConnect setup tool located at “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect”.
Once the process is completed, all the new attributes got added to sync with Azure Active Directory.
Installation of Exchange 2016
To prepare the Exchange 2010 Servers in your organization for coexistence with Exchange 2016, you'll need to do the following before you install Exchange 2016.
- Verify that the Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 (SP3) is installed on all the Exchange Servers in your organization.
- Verify that at least Update Rollup 11 for Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 is installed on all the Exchange 2010 SP3 servers in your organization.
- Install a hotfix for Outlook Anywhere on any Exchange 2010 SP3 computers running Windows 2008 R2.
Run Exchange Server 2016 installation file as administrator.
Ensure that you have the latest cumulative update file for Exchange Server 2016.
Activate the server using a free hybrid license key
Log into Exchange Admin Center with Exchange admin username and password.
Under Servers, select the new server – it shows as Trial Edition.
To get a hybrid license key, we need to run the Hybrid Configuration tool, which can be download from Hybrid option under Exchange Online Admin Center or http://aka.ms/HybridWizard
Make sure you run this from the new Exchange 2016 Server so it can detect all the settings automatically.
Once this detects optimal Exchange Server, click "License this server now".
You can copy the product key if you need to run re-installation on the same server.
Under Servers, now the new server shows up as Hybrid Deployment.
Part 2 of this article will cover the configuration update and migration of Hybrid Exchange 2010 to Hybrid Exchange 2016.
Feel free to reach out if you have any question or concerns.
Thank you for reading.