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Post migration from on premise Exchange 2016 to Office 365, no AD Sync

My client has moved from Exchange 2016 on premise to Office 365 hosted email. This appears to be running smoothly for two weeks. The client had Office 365 accounts in place before the migration, so separate credentials for the local domain and Office 365 were, and are, still used.
Since there is no sync between local AD credentials and Office 365 credentials, can the Exchange server be simply uninstalled at some point?
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Vasil Michev (MVP)
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Thanks.  Presented with those options, my guess is the owner will choose to manage two sets of credentials rather than keep the Exchange server online.
The client has Windows 2012 with the Essentials Experience enabled.  I saw a thread somewhere that refers to sync via the Essentials Experience.  Do you have any thoughts on this?
1. my guess is the owner will choose to manage two sets of credentials rather than keep the Exchange server online.

Answer: Yes he will have to because there is no other option if the account is not syncing with Azure AD Connect and shows In-cloud account so yes 2 set of credentials. At some point if you think now you need only one set, then you need to take a backup of the mailbox and remove the AD account from O365 portal and then create a new AD account in on-premise AD and sync with Azure AD and then assign license once the user in synced with Azure AD and then import emails back into the new mailbox OR OR OR you will have to do hard match of the user account.

2. The client has Windows 2012 with the Essentials Experience enabled.  I saw a thread somewhere that refers to sync via the Essentials Experience.  Do you have any thoughts on this?

Answer: Windows 2012 with the Essentials Experience can be used for syncing your AD users to O365 as it is a one box which has everything AD, SharePoint etc.

But if you plan to use a new DC for azure AD connect, then in the same environment where you have Windows 2012 with the Essentials Experience, introducing a new DC is not supported. You will get the unsupported error when you try to sync user in Windows 2012 with the Essentials Experience to Office 365 if you introduce a new DC in the same environment.

So if you have Windows 2012 with the Essentials Experience and all AD users are on the same box, then yes you can use this box to sync users from AD to Azure AD. You just need to enable it.

Also see:
Key Differences between Essentials Dashboard Azure AD Integration and Azure AD Connect.
https://www.itpromentor.com/essentials-vs-aadconnect/

Fix for Office 365 Integration issue with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials has been released.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/sbs/2016/10/25/fix-for-office-365-integration-issue-with-windows-server-2012-r2-essentials-has-been-released/#comment-92035

Manage Office 365 in Windows Server Essentials.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-essentials-sbs/jj593240(v=ws.11)?redirectedfrom=MSDN