Decomission Exchange Server in Hybrid Deployment with Exchange online

Referencing tech net article titled: Decommissioning your Exchange 2010 servers in a Hybrid Deployment ( I am not able to link to it due for some reason)

I was also not able to comment directly on the article, would appreciate if the author or someone in the know could kindly review my comment/question below and provide feedback:

So as I understand it if we used Hybrid mode as our method to migrate to O365 we must now keep an aging onPremise exchange server for time eternal?  This is not practical or sustainable as the whole point of going to O365 was to get rid of our old Exchange server.  Now we have to keep and maintain expensive hardware and keep windows patched and maintained etc, all the tasks we thought we were moving away from with this migration.  What happens when Exchange 2010 reaches EOL?  Do we then have to upgrade a server we are not really using? 

Please tell me there is an update to this article or an update in the works with a more sustainable solution to cut ties with old on-prem Exchange servers after migrating to O365.  Is there an update or something in the works?  Is there anyway I can speak to someone on this in more detail to better understand the details to the downsides listed in this article?  We very much want to shutdown our on prem server ASAP as we are shutting down our datacenter since moving to O365 and this is the only kink hold us back.

Thanks.

February 19th, 2015 6:10pm

It's recommended to keep at least one server for management purposes. Not mandatory, recommended.

Read for example here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/12/05/decommissioning-your-exchange-2010-servers-in-a-hybrid-deployment.aspx

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February 20th, 2015 4:42am

If you have the infrastructure, you could move to a virtual server, and upgrade to Exchange 2013. There is a free license for Exchange 2013 when used hybrid server.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2939261?wa=wsignin1.0

I have to admit to being slightly confused about the conditions for obtaining the hybrid license as it says you can't already have a licensed Exchange server.  So what do you do if you had Exchange and then migrated to Office 365 rather than created the hybrid initially?

February 20th, 2015 12:05pm

Greetings!

I am in the process of setting up our Exchange 2010 environment as a hybrid deployment with O365.  I can tell you that I just set up two Exch2013 CAS/MBX servers and licensed them with the Hybrid License with no issue, and we have numerous existing Exch 2010 licensed servers.

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February 20th, 2015 12:14pm

It's recommended to keep at least one server for management purposes. Not mandatory, recommended.

Read for example here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/12/05/decommissioning-your-exchange-2010-servers-in-a-hybrid-deployment.aspx

  • Proposed as answer by Allen_WangJF Monday, February 23, 2015 1:35 PM
February 20th, 2015 12:36pm

yes that is the article I referenced in my original post/question and was the basis for my question.  If you have any feedback on my original question I would be appreciative.  Bottom line is this recommendation going to be changed/updated as its impractical.
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February 24th, 2015 6:34pm

Thanks but the move to O365 was supposed to allow us to exit our data center all together and we have been moving all our other applications to the cloud.  Even the virtual server has to be updated/patched and sit on some hardware that also needs to have warranty, redundancy, patches etc-- this cuts into our ROI of moving to O365.  Our goal is to go completely cloud and this little gotcha has caught us by surprise.
February 24th, 2015 6:36pm

yes that is the article I referenced in my original post/question and was the basis for my question.  If you have any feedback on my original question I would be appreciative.  Bottom line is this recommendation going to be changed/updated as its impractical.

It really comes down to functionality offered by the on-premise server.  Do you not provision mailboxes on-premise first and then migrate them?
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February 25th, 2015 1:57am


It really comes down to functionality offered by the on-premise server.  Do you not provision mailboxes on-premise first and then mig
February 25th, 2015 6:09am

thoughts anyone?  Am I the only one that feels that this is an unsustainable situation?
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March 2nd, 2015 2:01pm

I don't want to rub it in your face...sincerely. But this was documented. It sounds like you were missold the concept when you opted for a hybrid deployment.
March 2nd, 2015 2:29pm

Sure fine, but just because its documented doesn't mean it should not be revaluated and/or resolved.  Am I missing something or am I the only one that feels that keeping an on-prem exchange server for all eternity simply to manage mailbox attributes and provision new accounts is ridiculous? 
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March 6th, 2015 8:33pm

Nobody is forcing you to keep an on-prem server, you can manage the attributes via ADSI Edit/attribute editor/3rd party tools. If you want to be in a fully supported scenario however, keeping at least one Exchange box is the way to go.
March 7th, 2015 5:24am

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