1

I’m migrating from Exchange 2013 cu9 to office 365 and will be using dirsync. So far I’ve ran the cutover batch and it has been doing its incremental syncs successfully for a few days now. No problems there.

I was reading more into dirsync and I came across this. https://community.office365.com/en-us/w/exchange/835 It mentions in step two running some scripts to convert mailboxes to mail-enabled users. When I click on the 2007 link it is talking about a staged migration. Is this a step that still needs to be done for a cutover migration? Is it something I can do before pointing the mx records to office 365? Any relevant information on this would help. Its a bit of a curve ball cause its the first time I’ve seen this mentioned in any migration guides. Also I can’t find any scripts for exchange 2013 on this.

My second question is can I setup dirsync now since all the mailboxes and users are provisioned in office 365 and the batch is just doing its incremental syncs?

I would like to have everything ready to go by Friday night so all I have left to do is make dns changes and point the mx records to 365 if that is possible. Then let incremental syncs finish.

Thanks.

3 Spice ups
2

I didn’t use cutover, but it doesn’t seem like there should be any more changes required. When I set up dirsync, it auto-matched my users with their mailboxes. If a couple get messed up, that is okay, they can be fixed without too much hassle.

3

I’ve done numerous cutover migrations and DirSync can get hairy… Microsoft says to not enable DirSync until after you finalize the cutover migration…

For me, I found that if I install and enable DirSync during the phase you’re in, just so I can get everyone’s network passwords pushed to 365, and then I disable DirSync until I finalize the cutover migration and then enable it again…

I’m sure this isn’t supported but for me the huge thing is for users to be able to log in with their AD password to their email so that’s the workaround I was able to do…

1 Spice up
4

Why are you planning to use dirsync? It’s deprecated and there have been at least 2 replacements already. The current one is Azure AD Connect.

1 Spice up
5

Thanks that’s a good idea about disabling dirsync before finishing the cutover. On the link I provided, did you go thru the whole process of converting on premise mailboxes into mail enabled users? This is the only link I’ve found saying to do this with a cutover. I’ve only seen it referenced anywhere else in regards to staged migrations.

6

I’ve never converted on premise to mail enabled in any that I have done…

1 Spice up
7

Sorry, it will be Azure AD. In my brain there was adfs and dirsync. Been reading so many tech notes and guides its all blurred at this point.

1 Spice up
8

I haven’t done a migration in a while and didn’t know about Azure AD… LarryG, is it basically the same thing? Install it in your environment and it pushes user objects / passwords to 365?

9

Yes, it’s just a newer version that has more capabilities. It’s also a bit easier to set up and use. Switching from dirsync is simple - just uninstall dirsync and install AAD connect.

1 Spice up
10

I would like to mention a nice article that covers some good points to migrate smoothly and swiftly from on-premise Exchange Server to Office 365 : Lepide Blog: A Guide to IT Security, Compliance and IT Operations

11

I think you only need them to be mail-enabled mailboxes if you are going to continue to manage them through an on-premises exchange server in a hybrid deployment.

1 Spice up
12

Thank you for these posts. I had the exact same questions and these answered it.