28Jan2016
25Jan2016
Manage Office 365 Mailboxes using Directory Synchronization w/o Hybrid Exchange
When you have a hybrid environment configured between Exchange 2010 or 2013 and Office 365, then you will probably have noticed that mailbox creation and management happens on-premises. For example, to create a new mailbox, you would initiate this process from the local Exchange server instead of the Office 365...
21Jan2016
How-to Complete your Office 365 Setup and Exchange E-Mail Migration
When setting up a new Office 365 tenancy or migrating from an on-premises or hosted Email system to Office 365, one last step will be to add all the necessary DNS records to your DNS zone file, and then make the appropriate changes to your on-premises Active Directory and Exchange...
18Jan2016
Certification vs. Qualification
I hold several certifications in my field of expertise: a number of Microsoft certifications, as well as Cisco, WatchGuard, IBM and other technologies. Before all of that happened, I also earned my bachelor’s in mathematics and philosophy from University, as well as a shiny Master’s degree from a private college. My...
14Jan2016
Exchange Hybrid Licensing
I have mentioned previously on this site that hybrid Exchange is the best way to migrate to Office 365. Hybrid enables rich co-existence between your on-premises Exchange server and Office 365 / Exchange Online in the cloud. Hybrid is emphatically NOT a "special" version of Exchange Server, nor does it require...
14Jan2016
Comparing Office 365 Migration Methods
At the time of this writing, Microsoft offers three primary migration paths from on-premises Exchange servers into Office 365: Cut-over, Staged and Remote Move.* In this series I would like to discuss each of them, and highlight the differences.Cut-over migration
The first option is the cut-over migration. Cut-over can be used with...
11Jan2016
Why a “Hybrid” or Remote Move Migration is Always the Right Choice
True, hybrid does require more up-front configuration, and of course there are those pesky pre-requisite requirements of having Exchange 2010 or 2013, as well as Azure AD Connect for Directory Synchronization. But the benefits do outweigh these concerns—trust me. The overall time commitment to your migration project will plummet with a hybrid...
07Jan2016
How-to Verify Your Domain with Office 365
So this is a very common task when provisioning new Office 365 accounts. You can obtain a free trial here. I recommend the E3 trial, even if you only plan to buy the Exchange Online plan ultimately. The licensing can be changed out seamlessly, and in the meantime...
04Jan2016