Any reason to keep Exchange Server 2019 running on premise after all user mailboxes are migrated successfully to ExO?

EnterpriseArchitect 5,036 Reputation points
2024-02-23T04:32:23.9666667+00:00

I need some clarification on retaining the most recent Exchange Server installation in my on-premise data centre.

All of my users have been migrated to Exchange Online, and the old AD DS has been synced to Azure AD (Entra ID).

There are several Exchange Server 2016 installations on my single forest AD Domain.

Does this mean I'll need to perform the inline upgrade to Exchange Server 2019 (the most recent Cumulative Update) and only maintain that one server running with just the Management Console? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  1. Thameur-BOURBITA 32,621 Reputation points
    2024-02-23T06:13:45.63+00:00

    Hi

    If you’re in hybrid environment , all synced accounts can be modified only on onpremise environments. That’s why you need to keep at least one exchange server onpremise if you still have synced accounts . Without onpremise exchange server you will unable to edit Exchange attributes on synced accounts . When you convert all synced accounts to cloud only accounts in this case you can remove your onpremise exchange server

    Please don’t forget to accept helpful answer

    1 person found this answer helpful.

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  1. Yuki Sun-MSFT 40,931 Reputation points
    2024-02-23T08:05:03.4933333+00:00

    Hi @EnterpriseArchitect ,

    Supposing your organization has been running in a hybrid configuration, if you don't need to manage your users synced from on-premises, you can remove the Exchange server on-premise. Otherwise, you do need to remain at least one Exchange server on-premise. For more details, hopefully you can find the scenarios in the article below helpful:

    How and when to decommission your on-premises Exchange servers in a hybrid deployment

    (Note: if you just want to keep an on-prem Exchange for recipient management, you can be able to shut down the last Exchange server and manage recipients using Windows PowerShell, see Manage recipients in Exchange Hybrid environments using Management tools.)

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