What is Exchange Coexistence: The Comprehensive Knowledge Guide
Summary: In this article, you will learn about what is Exchange coexistence. However, it helps you during upgrades, minimizing downtime, and ensuring seamless data migration. Also, you will explore the benefits and the conditions required to set up the same.
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Planning to upgrade the entire organization’s email system but don’t know what is Exchange coexistence. This blog will be beneficial for you as it provides a complete basic understanding of it. Nowadays, Every second organization is using a Microsoft Exchange server to avoid downtime while migrating. Also to overcome the risk of data loss. However, in the organization, it plays an essential role. It helps you to work with two different email systems together without any problem. And allow the user to share and access the data from different sources. Therefore, you can work to coexist & work together without issues. However, most businesses are shifting towards the cloud solution. At a certain time, they need to migrate their data due to different factors time they need it to work seamlessly. You can communicate and collaborate with your team members.
What is Exchange Coexistence?
In general, it is a term that refers to the situation where you can use the different Microsoft Exchange servers with their different versions. It provides you the strategy to make use of different versions of the Exchange Server side-by-side in the same organization. To minimize the downtime even useful in the smooth transition. During the transition, you can use your old mailboxes until the new mailbox is in processing. It might be possible that two users working on the same organization use different versions of the Exchange server. Moreover, to set up the communication you need to permit the different exchange servers. Let’s move towards the benefits of it.
Read More About : Exchange On-Premise vs Exchange Online
What are the Benefits of Using Exchange Coexistence?
There are several benefits to using it some of them as follows.
- Easily migrate Mailboxes – You can easily migrate the mailbox to the new system without any issue as you have another mailbox also in use. The working of the team will not be affected while migrating.
- Reduces Risk – The migration can be done smoothly and the risk of data loss is not here while using this since it also helps to minimize downtime.
Usually, it is helpful in the validation and testing also and smooth upgrades.
How to Setup the Exchange Coexistence?
When setting up the configuration user needs to follow Directory Synchronization, Mail Flow Configuration, and Client Access. Here are the steps to set up that you need to follow.
Step 1. Sign in for a Microsoft Office 365 account with your credentials.
Step 2. Now, Install and set up the Exchange Server 2016 and make sure that your Active directory is running in parallel
Step 3. Configure the hybrid deployment by making use of the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
Step 4. From the Admin Panel launch the Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
Step 5. Go to “Hybrid” and fix the settings by Executing it and following the prompt. Therefore, a wizard guides you to configure the hybrid settings between on-premises Exchange and Exchange Online.
Step 6. Enable mail-enabled users in the Active directory.
You need to ensure that every object from a third-party system has a corresponding user object in the local Active Directory. As part of the coexistence process, these users need to be mail-enabled
Note: you can install & configure Microsoft Entra to synchronize into Microsoft Office 365. Also, configure the shared namespace routing for the mail flow.
Before setting up these steps you need to fulfill the pre-requisites mentioned below. Otherwise, your setup will not work. And the connection will not established between the Exchange server. With this, you can clarify about What is Exchange coexistence.
What are the Conditions Required?
If you want to apply it within your organization you need to fulfill some specific requirements. Make sure you are aware of these conditions before setting up the co-existence. The conditions are listed as follows.
- Subscription – The subscription to Microsoft 365 or Office 365 must be an enterprise subscription.
- Version Support – It does not support every version. Usually, newer versions co-exist with a few older versions.
- Server Role – In the on-premises organization, you need to install the Exchange 2016 Mailbox Server to meet these requirements.
- DNS Namespaces – In general, Exchange supports different domain name system (DNS) namespace configurations. It includes contiguous, noncontiguous, single-label, and disjoint namespaces.
- Network Architecture – It must be prepared to allow the traffic. It involves ensuring users that the necessary ports are open between the Exchange organizations. Therefore you require a stable network architecture.
- Hybrid Deployment – The organization has both the Exchange Server and Exchange Online environments with it. The benefit of a hybrid deployment is that it provides a smooth user experience. It allows a phased migration approach which is beneficial for smooth migration.
- Active Directory – Before implementing Exchange coexistence, you need to add the preparation of the active directory. The requirement must be fulfilled to make a stable connection between the domain and the forest. The On-premises organization is running with an active directory with Exchange 2016. Moreover, to manage emails user Exchange Management Shell and the Exchange Server Active Directory schema are required.
See other: How to Connect Exchange Online PowerShell?
Steps to Configure Shared Namespace Routing
To configure a Shared namespace, since you already installed the exchange server and completed the setup. Also, follow the configurations required i.e. given above after that you need to follow the steps given below.
Step 1. Choose a subdomain for the shared namespace.
Step 2. Now create address policies used to map existing naming conventions.
Step 3. You need to change the DomainType to Internal Relay.
Step 4. Configure your mail exchanger record to mail routing.
Solution For The Smooth Migration
If your organization uses an on-premises Exchange Server 2016 for emails. And you decided to migrate user mailboxes to Exchange Server 2019 with Exchange Online. And using a hybrid coexistence for a staged migration. Looking for an automated solution for migrating smoothly in batches. You can make use of the Migrator Wizard Exchange Migration Tool for this. By which you can perform the batch migrations smoothly. You can download and Purchase this Tool using these buttons.
Key features of the tool
- Supports the Delta Migration by using it to migrate newly arrived data.
- Helps to migrate email, contact, calendar, task, and document.
- You can set up the priority for the migration.
- It provides support for the user’s mapping.
- Make the batch settings so you can perform batch migrations.
Read More: Office 365 Staged Migration
Bringing It All Together
Hope you may get a clear picture of what is Exchange coexistence with this writing. However, it is common and used by every second organization. moreover, you need to follow the best practices. it includes planning and testing, making use of compatible versions, configuring DNS properly, configuring DNS properly, and training users for it. Moreover, successful co-existence requires planning & configuration to ensure smooth communication between on-premises and cloud-based systems.