Minimal Hybrid Configuration option! What's that?

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If organizations with exchange 2007 and later wants to move to cloud the most preferred option is Staged migration. But if you have Exchange 2010 and above we cannot do Staged migration, rather we have to either do Hybrid or Cutover migration.

If you go with Cutover migration

  • All the users needed to be migrated at once
  • Once migrated the user's Outlook profile needs to be re-created. The more users the more fun ;)

To overcome the above limitations if you choose Hybrid migration, you will have

  • To follow strict prerequisites in terms of certificates(that we require for cross premise free/busy and TLS for Mailflow)
  • To deal with complex(for some) scenarios of implementing the Hybrid.

What if you fall in the below category? (From HERE )

  • Small or medium sized customers that need a seamless migration experience for their users.
  • Customers that do not require enhanced features like:
    • Cross-premises Free/Busy
    • TLS secured mail flow between on-premises and Exchange Online
    • Cross-premises eDiscovery
    • Automatic Outlook on the web and ActiveSync redirection for migrated users
    • Automatic Retention for Archive Mailbox
  • Customers that plan on moving to the service quickly and, therefore, do not require the enhanced features previously mentioned.
  • Merger or acquisition scenarios may benefit from this configuration since you can move the mailboxes to a tenant without having to configure all of the Hybrid features.
  • Customers that need Exchange installed On-premises for recipient administration purposes

minimal-hybrid-wizard

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What are the benefits of this kind of Migration?

  • Users don’t have to re-create their Outlook Profile once the migration is completed.
  • The migration is online move, meaning the user's mailbox is connected to the profile for the majority of the time(We do an MRS to move not Outlook over HTTP).
  • Mailflow is not affected for the users being migrated
  • User account is synced from on-prem to cloud(along with credentials), so you don’t have to remember 2 credentials or have the credentials set to same as that of on-prem etc

There are few other Q & A like below discussed here

How do I move mailboxes after I run the wizard?

Will Exchange Online Archive mailbox access function in a Minimal Hybrid Configuration?

Will cross-premises mail flow function in a Minimal Hybrid Configuration?

What conditions expose the Hybrid Features dialog?

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    -   Praveen Kumar E

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