Office 365 Mailbox Migration: Is it Possible To Do a Hybrid Deployment Between On-Premise & Exchange Online Organization?
IT personnel have a general notion that ‘migrations are complex, this article discusses the hybrid deployment of Office 365 mailbox migration.
Researchers from Gartner have estimated that the response to the pandemic has fast-forwarded digital adoption by five years. For Microsoft, the COVID pandemic accelerated the remote work trend and pushed the adoption rates for cloud-based Microsoft 365 environments.
If you are among the organizations which are moving from on-premise to Cloud or making a switch from other Cloud vendors to Office solutions offered by Microsoft, you can rest assured as Microsoft offers many migration options for enterprises.
Your organization can carry out Office 365 migration from other systems; for instance, you can migrate email from another IMAP-enabled email system or migrate mailboxes from Exchange Server. Furthermore, if you run a small business, your workforce can import their contacts, email, and other mailbox information to an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 mailbox created for them.
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What is Hybrid O365 Mailbox Migration?
A hybrid mailbox migration offers enterprises the ability to extend the feature-rich administrative control and experience they have with their existing on-premises Exchange deployment to the Cloud. A hybrid deployment provides a single Exchange organization’s seamless feel and looks between Exchange Online in Office 365 or Microsoft 365 and an on-premises Exchange organization. Additionally, a hybrid mail migration to Office 365 can serve as an intermediate step for businesses to completely move to a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization.
When to Choose Hybrid Office 365 Migration?
If you are planning an Office 365 migration, you must answer the following questions to get a better idea if they need a hybrid server configuration or not:
- Due to compliance and legal reasons, do some of your mailboxes need to be on the physical server?
- Do you wish to scale your system capacity? If yes, will it become expensive to increase your on-premise server capacity?
- Are you sure that you want to maintain both cloud and on-premise servers running in parallel?
If you answered ‘yes’ for any of the above questions, then a hybrid O365 mailbox migration is suitable for you.
When to NOT Choose a Hybrid Office 365 Migration?
If you decide to go with a physical or a cloud-based server at any point before the mailbox migration, do not go with a hybrid migration. Hybrid O365 mailbox migration is more of a necessity than a choice because not all organizations can presumably decommission their physical servers due to different reasons. However, if no such restriction applies to your business, you will not need a hybrid cloud environment.
Minimal Hybrid O365 Mailbox Migration
Microsoft offers two ways for mail migration to Office 365 – Minimal or Express Migration and Full Hybrid Migration. Complete Migration is a long-term migration that includes support for extra features, like integration with SharePoint, free/busy scheduling, archiving, e-discovery, multimedia, etc.
Minimal Hybrid Configuration Use-Cases
For businesses running a relatively simple Exchange configuration, having a relatively small number (up to 2,000 mailboxes) of users, departments and groups, not using the advanced features like e-discovery, workflows, or free/busy sharing, and looking for a quick, simple O365 mailbox migration, a minimal hybrid Configuration is a good option. The following points highlight for which enterprises the minimal hybrid configuration may be suitable:
- Small or medium-sized businesses that need a seamless migration experience for their users: Small or mid-sized enterprises, particularly those that aren’t using the advanced multi-media or scheduling features of Exchange but want insurance against problems, can use the minimal hybrid office 365 mailbox migration tool. Thus, they can produce a similar effect to the cutover migration but with the ability to do troubleshooting and additional configuration before moving to the new structure permanently.
- Enterprises that do not need enhanced features of the Full Hybrid approach: There are many features of the Exchange beyond email, which include scheduling resources and personnel like conference rooms, interfacing with third-party video conferencing systems, etc. Businesses that require these features must go with the Full Hybrid configuration.
- Businesses that need to move to the service quickly: Enterprises that can manage an extended period from starting the Migration and ultimately moving to Office 365 (over two weeks) must consider the Full Hybrid O365 mailbox migration. If the businesses are ok with the two weeks, the Minimal Hybrid approach is easier and simpler to implement.
When You Need Full Hybrid Mailbox Migration?
For enterprises that need to maintain the Hybrid operation for over a couple of weeks, the Full Hybrid migration is prudent. Likewise, businesses that use advanced features like archiving, free/busy scheduling, e-discovery, multimedia, or which require integration with SharePoint should consider Full Hybrid O365 mailbox migration.
Final Words
Organizations must complete many steps before any migration, like verifying the ownership of their DNS domain, applying any recent patches to the Outlook clients or the Exchange Server, etc. Planning out the O365 mailbox migration is a must, even for small 20-person email systems, and the more complex their environment, the more backups, planning, and precautions they should take. Before they start the Office 365 mailbox migration, organizations must review best practices and limits for Exchange Online to ensure they get the behavior and performance they expect after the Migration.
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