Migration of Skype for Business Hybrid Environment to Skype for business Online

A Quick search on web didn’t show much information on what all needs to be done for moving the infrastructure from skype for business hybrid setup to skype for business online setup. I thought of writing this blog with detailed procedure, so that it would be easier for anyone who are looking for details when they are planning to move from Skype for business hybrid to Skype for business Online scenario.

Before looking into the migration steps or procedure, lets first look at the process flow of Skype for business User sign in when in Hybrid setup.

Onpremise user sign in process (User : Onprem@domain.com)

  1. User provides the sip address Onprem@domain.com and clicks sign in on Skype for Business Client.
  2. Skype for Business Client makes Lync Autodiscover Query “Lyncdiscover.domain.com” which will be pointing to Onpremise Servers (as it’s a hybrid setup) and reaches the Front end server (Hybrid Server).
  3. Once Request Reaches the Front End server, Server first authenticates the user and checks if user is homed onpremise or online, since user is homed onpremise, User signs in to the onpremise Front end server and server will provide required services.

Online user sign in process (User : Online@domain.com)

  1. User provides the sip address Online@domain.com and clicks sign in on Skype for Business Client.
  2. SFB Client makes Lync Autodiscover Query “Lyncdiscover.domain.com” which will be pointing to On premise Servers (as it’s a hybrid setup) and hits the Front End Server
  3. Once Request Reaches the Front End server first authenticates the user and checks if user is homed onpremise or online, since user is not homed onpremise, it will check Hosted SRV parameter and identifies that user is homed online.
  4. Onpremise server will redirect the user to connect to online Servers by providing the Hosting Provider FQDN “Sipfed.online.lync.com”.
  5. User will then connect to online servers (after multiple redirects to user’s home server), which will re-authenticate the user and provide required services.

Once we are all set for migration from onpremise to Online, expect outages during the course of performing these actions (highly advised to perform these during non-business hours) as there is dependency on DNS servers TTL and Client DNS Cache.

Below are the steps to move the services from Hybrid completely to Skype for business online:

Step 1:

Ensure that all the users are migrated from Skype for business onpremise to Online

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj204969.aspx

 

Step 2:

Ensure that none the Applications (Office Servers or any third party applications) are dependent on the skype for business onpremise servers or made changes to make use of Skype for business online.

 

Step 3:

Modify the DNS records (externally & internally) and point the records to hit the skype for business online Services

44

Optionally, we can delete below unused records, as all the users are homed Online:

ExternalDNS:

2

InternalDNS:

3

Step 4:

Disable shared address space on Skype for business online:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj994080.aspx

   Set-CsTenantFederationConfiguration –SharedSipAddressSpace $false

 

Step 5:

Clears resource records from a cache on the DNS server.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj649893.aspx

Clears the contents of the DNS client cache.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/%5Clibrary/jj553809(v=wps.630).aspx

 

Step 6:

Test the current setup for at least 2 weeks to ensure that after all the above changes, there is no issues or dependency on the Skype for business Onpremise Servers before proceeding with decommissioning of onpremise servers.

Decommission the Skype for business onpremise deployment

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg195815(v=ocs.14).aspx

 

 

Pragathi Raj S

Premier Field Engineer - Microsoft