In each project or subproject, it is always advised to carefully plan using best practices, depending on the type of implementation or migration that you require.
You will need to know the core functions and capabilities of Exchange and its requirements.
The best way to start is to use the Microsoft Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. This tool is an effective way to start the planning of your project. It is available at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dn756393.aspx. As shown in the following screenshot, it supports several scenarios:
Exchange Server Deployment Assistant is a tool that was developed to help the implementation of Exchange scenarios, either on-premises, cloud, or hybrid. This tool asks you a few questions within the scenario that you have in place or your future scenario, and it will give you a checklist of the tasks you must perform. It also provides you with an estimate of how much effort you'll need to spend on your project to help you calculate the required investment.
At the time of writing, the deployment assistant supports the following scenarios:
- Exchange 2016
- Exchange 2013
- Exchange 2010
- Cloud-only
- Hybrid
In the following example, we will use Exchange 2016 in a hybrid deployment (on-premises and Office 365) scenario in the deployment assistant.
When we start the deployment, the assistant allows us to choose Hybrid, as shown in the following screenshot:
Next, we are going to select Exchange 2016 hybrid.
Then, select the Exchange Server 2016 as the Current on-premises environment option:
We are going to select the first scenario, but you will need an Office 365 plan that is supported for the hybrid scenario, such as enterprise, government, nonprofit, or education:
Next, you'll be asked to select the authentication method. Select the Password synchronization (recommended) radio button, as shown in the following screenshot:
In the Edge Transport question, to keep this scenario simple, just select a scenario that does not require edge servers by clicking on the No radio button:
Then, we are asked how the inbound messages should be routed, through the on-premises email server or through Office 365. Select the option to route the messages through Office 365:
After clicking on the Next button, we will see the checklist with the steps to deploy this scenario:
This will be the deployment scenario demonstrated throughout this chapter. I use my domain name, nuno-silva.net, in all the examples.
The following is a summary of the deployment options.
The Exchange Server Deployment Assistant is the best way to know the most appropriate scenario for your organization as well as to guide you throughout the deployment of Exchange. With this tool, you only need to answer some questions about the Exchange environment, and the deployment assistant will provide you with the instructions to deploy that scenario. If you do not have experience within Exchange deployments, it is advised that you contact a partner to design your scenario and to deploy your Exchange workload. The partners have extensive experience from years deploying Exchange scenarios in complex architectures that you can leverage, avoiding surprises and issues with your deployment.
The scenario that will be described in the following sections is the hybrid scenario using Exchange 2016 connected to Office 365 with Azure AD Connect with password sync.