Category: Active Directory

Can I place my Exchange hybrid management server in Azure and use Azure Domain Services?

As some might know (although I and others have to repeat this regularly…), if you enable directory synchronization from your on-premises Active Directory (AD) and you migrate all you Exchange mailboxes to Exchange Online you still require an Exchange server to manage mail(box) objects. It is the only supported solution, even though some use third party tooling or ADSIedit. Luckily...

Azure Active Directory Synchronization: Object Matching

This post is the fifth in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization and will cover Object Matching. Other posts have covered and will cover: Introduction, Part 1 Introduction, Part 2 Filtering, Part 1 Filtering, Part 2 Alternate Logon ID Object Matching and Joining Object matching or joining is relevant if you have multiple Active Directory (AD) forests you want to...

Azure Active Directory Synchronization: An Introduction, Part 2

This post is the second in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization, covering part 2 of an introduction. Previous and follow up posts have covered and will cover: Introduction, Part 1 Filtering, Part 1 Filtering, Part 2 Object Matching Alternate Logon ID As most organizations will not require FIM, I will focus my attention mostly on AADSync. Although DirSync...

Azure Active Directory Synchronization: An Introduction, Part 1

This post is a first in a series about Azure Active Directory Synchronization, covering part 1 of the introduction. Follow up posts will cover: Introduction Part 2 Filtering Part 1 Filtering Part 2 Object Matching Alternate Logon ID   Why you want have synchronization For those who don’t work regularly with Office 365 or other Microsoft cloud services (like Azure, Exchange Online Protection), it...

Some things to do after leaving Windows Server 2003 (from an Exchange perspective)

Today the Exchange Team blog posted an article about upgrading the Domain Functional (DFL) level of your Active Directory environment away from Windows Server 2003 and the fact that raising the level might have some impact on your Exchange servers (and other applications). It is possible that they might not be able to authenticate. If you do run into issues after...

From open source groupware solution Zarafa to Exchange: Part 2, Active Directory

See also Part 1: A New Beginning When using Zarafa there are several possible directory services you can use for authentication. I will restrict this post to situations relevant to Active Directory (AD) integration. Even if you did not use Active Directory (or Zarafa for that matter) previously, I believe this post still contains valuable information. Getting to know your...

From open source groupware solution Zarafa to Exchange: Part 1, A New Beginning

This blog series will describe my experiences and lessons learned from migrating the Zarafa Groupware solution to Microsoft Exchange, specifically Exchange Server 2013. I’ve done this twice now and although some things are quite obvious, there are some gotchas and it might be a daunting endeavor. A normal transition from Exchange to Exchange already requires good planning, but it is...

Exchange Server 2013 Preview – Preparing Active Directory [Video]

Last Monday Exchange Server 2013 Preview Release (PR) was finally but rather silently released, together with all of the Wave 15 products (Office, Lync Server, SharePoint server). You can see the keynote here. Trying something new: I’ve made a video demonstrating which steps are necessary to prepare Active Directory for Exchange 2013 PR and how you can check whether this...

Can’t change OWA password at first logon via Threat Management Gateway?

During the first stages of delivering services of our newly built infrastructure to end-users, we came across an annoying issue. Exchange was the first to be accessed, but specifically through Outlook Web App (OWA). As the users where migrated from eDIR and GroupWise, they would get credentials from us. As a security measure we wanted to make a password change...

The Road to Exchange 2010: Active Directory and Exchange Part 3

In part 1 we’ve discussed the Exchange Mode, Domain Controllers and Schema Master compatibility. In part 2 we’ve discussed the Global Catalog and the Domain and Forest Functional level up to Windows 2008. So, that leaves us with Windows Server 2008 R2. During the time it took to write this series of blogs a lot more information was made available....

The Road to Exchange 2010: Active Directory and Exchange Part 2

In part 1 of this series, I discussed the requirements of Exchange Mode, Domain Controllers and the Schema Master in combination of various versions of Exchange. In this post I will discuss the placement of Global Catalogs (GC), the Domain Functional Level (DFL) and Forest Functional level (FFL) required. In part 3 I will discuss the compatibility of Exchange with...

The Road to Exchange 2010: Active Directory and Exchange Part 1

*** edit: updated 28/9/2009 with corrections of some errors/typo’s and added compatibility matrices In my post The Road to Exchange 2010: Migration paths I’ve discussed about the different possible migration transition paths to Exchange Server 2010. Primarily which Exchange version can be installed on which version of Windows Server and which co-existing Exchange versions are possible. In this post I...