Over the past few years, I've migrated many mailboxes into Exchange Online. I've talked to customers with every possible set of requirements, and I've been able to accommodate most of them. Until recently, there has been one category of migration requirements that I haven't been able to accommodate: multi-forest migrations. For customers with two or more separate Active Directory (AD) forests, each with their own Exchange deployment, the supported solutions for moving to a single Office 365 tenant were very limited. They could either consolidate their on-premises AD forests into a single forest, or they could contact Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and develop a custom solution using Forefront Identity Manager.
New features in Office 365 partner admin center
One great feature of Office 365 that many may not be aware of is the partner admin center. This gives Office 365 deployment partners who meet specific requirements the ability to have a connection into their customers Office 365 tenant with the customers permission. I have the ability to send a customer a link that will allow them to grant me access into their Office 365 tenant using my own Office 365 credentials, making it much easier for me to do deployment and support work for them.
Read moreUpdated PowerShell script: Activate-SyncedPasswords
A couple of weeks ago I published a script that assists with switching your Office 365 authentication method from federated to managed and back again. After playing with the script for a while, I have realized that I had made a couple of incorrect assumptions about the rep-requisites for this script.
Read moreExchange 2013 processor sizing: virtual server edition
In a recent article I explained the process of sizing your processors for Exchange 2013. Hopefully I explained that process is a clear and understandable way, but there is something I left out. How do virtual servers affect this process? The answer, as always, is “it depends”.
Read morePowerShell script: Activate-SyncedPasswords
In June of 2013, Microsoft released an update to the DirSync appliance that allowed it to sync passwords from an on-premises Active Directory into Azure Active Directory for use in authentication. Since then, Microsoft has also released AADSync, which is a more advance version of DirSync that allows for more complex on-premises Active Directory configurations to be connected to Azure Active Directory. Recently AADSync was updated to include the password sync feature.
Read moreExchange 2013 processor sizing
One component of properly sizing Exchange deployments that I do not think is well understood is the process of sizing processors. In this post, I am going to walk you through the process of sizing the processor for your new Exchange 2013 server deployment.
Read moreManaging Distribution Lists in Hybrid Exchange Online/Office 365 Environments →
Microsoft has done a great job of ensuring that hybrid Exchange Online/Office 365 tenants have almost all of the features and functionality of on-premises Exchange Server deployments, without the need for running and maintaining their own servers. However, there is still one major gap companies consistently run into as they move to a hybrid Exchange Online/Office 365 environment: distribution list (DL) management.
Read morePowerShell script: Get-UsersPerDB
I’m working on an Exchange migration project. I did a green field Exchange 2013 deployment to migrate users to from a hosted solution. During the process I created about 3200 new mailboxes, and I must have done something wrong because those mailboxes ended up all clumped up in a couple of the databases. The problem I ran into is there is no good way to see your mailbox distribution across a number of databases in the Exchange Admin Console.
Read moreUsers unable to delete public folder items after public folder migration to Exchange 2013
I recent ran across a case where a customer had recently migrated to Exchange 2013. As one of the final steps in the migration, they migrated their public folders to modern public folders on Exchange 2013. After the public folder migration was complete, the users were unable to delete or modify pre-existing public folder items even though they appeared to have the correct permissions
Read moreMaking the Office 365 portal work for true single sign-on
Deploying ADFS for use with Office 365 is intended to give users a single sign-on experience. As anyone who has deployed Office 365 will tell you, you don’t really get true single sign-on. Depending on the type of client you are using, your “single sign-on” experience can vary pretty widely. The Lync and CRM online clients do give users single sign-on, but Outlook does not. Sitting in the middle you have the experience of logging into the Office 365 Portal.
Read moreAnnouncing the Portland Office 365 Users Group
Today I am happy to announce the first meeting on the Portland Office 365 Users Group has been scheduled. On January 29th at 10:00 am we will hold our first meeting at the Microsoft office in downtown Portland.
Read moreQuickly Get the Data You Need for Troubleshooting Exchange Server 2013 Problems →
Historically, gathering performance data when troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Server wasn't much fun. You had to figure out what performance counters you wanted to use, then set up Performance Monitor to gather data for several days before you could do any troubleshooting. Thanks to a new diagnostic feature in Exchange Server 2013, that's no longer the case.
Read moreGroups for Office 365
Groups is a new collaboration feature within Exchange Online that is now live on at least some tenants. I have “First Release” turned on for my Office 365 tenant, and I now have Groups available so I figure that means I am free to talk about what this new feature is and what it does.
Read moreChanging user logon domain in Office 365
When syncing your users to your Office 365 tenant via DirSync there are a number of reason that their login ID and primary SMTP address can end up being set to @tenant.onmicrosoft.com. Maybe you started DirSync before the domain was accepted in Office 365, or maybe your users UPNs are set to something other than the domain name you want to use as their primary SMTP address. Whatever the reason, once users are synced and end up with the wrong login ID, it can be a pain to change them especially for a large number of users. One way to fix that problem is with the following PowerShell command run after you connect to Azure AD via the Azure AD module.
Read moreManaging Office 365 licenses with PowerShell
In my never ending quest to make Office 365 migrations as simple as possible for myself, I have written a PowerShell script that should make Office 365 license management easier. Version 1.0 of Manage-Office365Licenses is available on the TechNet Gallery. My goal with this script is to provide a simple interface that will assist administrators in bulk assigning Office 365 licenses to user accounts.
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