Hi
Currently have a Single Exchange 2010 Server that originally was setup with the /hosting switch and then over time upgraded through the Service Packs and now has SP 3 Installed. We currently don't have a control panel just use either ECP or Powershell Commands.
We are going to be building a 2 Node Exchange 2016 with DAG. And looking at using Solid CP as the Control Panel.
I am going to be building a Sandbox Environment that will consist of our Domain Controller and Exchange 2010 Box with the Exchange 2016 2 Node in DAG and Control Panel before building the production system.
What is the best way to go about it.
My Questions are
Q1: Do I need to build a whole new Active Directory Environment for Hosted Exchange 2016
Q2: If I don't need to build a whole new Active Directory and can use the existing AD Environment. What is the best way it integrate the Solid CP. Do I need to build the Exchange 2016 2 Node DAG and will it co-exist with Exchange 2010 or does the co-exist only work if exchange 2010 wasn't setup for multi-tenant.
Q3: How do I migrate / import users and mailboxes into Solid CP
Q1: From any exchange /hosting installation you will need a new AD yes..
Q2 : N/A
Q3: you first follow the official documentation (it will be almost the same for exchange 2016) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=28788
Then you need to import all users with the enterprise import tool. (be advised that this can be buggy, and is not updated for 2016 yet)
Sorry for my late response.
Q2: If you don't have a previous panel you can pretty much first follow the normal 2016 setup guide. But since you where /hosting first make sure the segregation is done correctly for 2016 (this is pretty simple but means you need to have:
- OU Per organization (so not all in 1 OU)
- Address book policy per organization (organizationame)
- OAB per organization
- Address list, room list, Global address list per organization.
What i usually do to get things ready is:
- Follow the normal configuration guide (exch 2013/ 2016) in solidcp kb
- Make sure you have a primary PF else fix it up (reset in adsi).
- Create global mailbox plans
- Check over Hosting plan, make sure hosted org and hosted exchange is checked. recoverable storage an value such as 6144 or higher (not 0 or unlimited) and generally you want to leave litigation hold alone (it's anti-deletion)
- Make a test run with a testdomain (i would use a fake domain you will never miss if it breaks like testdomain.com)
- Once succesfully created i would go with the prep for import.
Prep & import:
- Create solidCP users per organization and assign them their hosting plan
- make sure the Organization is created
- Move the AD users of the existing exchange mailboxes for that organization into the newly created OU
- Use the Enterprise import tool (make sure the configuration file is properly configured, in specific connection string, cipher key --> they can be found in enterprise web.config)
- import them to solidcp.
Once imported:
- Check them in ECP make sure they got the org's address book policy
- You might want to set default PF with an old script to avoid additional auth popups.
in the end it seems quite daunting but once you did it once or twice it will be quite simple (boring) work.
Do note that the import tool isn't 100% yet, so some advanced functionalities in SolidCP might not fully work for imported items at this moment. but basic operations should function as expected
Can you provide the full step for this migration ?
Sorry i'm new at solidcp.
Thanks
