I am a complete exchange newbie - we do not currently use Exchange for our email, but we are looking to move our email to the Office 365 cloud.  As a result, I have a lab environment that is a mirror of our AD (different domain name), with an O365 trial, WAAD Sync installed and functioning, ADFS and ADFS Proxy installed, and functioning.  Now that I have this environment up and running I would like to do some testing with Exchange accounts.  

So I connected to EXO using Powershell, and tried to add an alias to an account:  Set-Mailbox -identity user -EmailAddress SMTP:user@mycompany.com, user1@mycompany.com.  I got an error that basically stated because I am using ADFS, all of these attributes are meant to be maintained in my on prem AD.

In my on prem AD, because we have never had Exchange installed or implemented, our AD Schema does not reflect any Exchange attributes.  

So I guess, given this, I have a couple of questions:

1.  Can I / Should I download the exchange 2013 eval and use the install to extend our AD schema to include Exchange attributes?  I have seen some blog posts that reference this approach.  

2.  If I want to manage my Exchange online using powershell, while utilizing ADFS - how can I do this?  Is it possible to use Exchange Powershell cmdlets in my situation?  For example, without connecting to Exchange Online via powershell, I don't have any module or anything that contains a Set-Mailbox cmdlet.  Furthermore, when I try to run it against O365, because they are federated identities, apparently I am not in the correct write scope.

I can't imagine I am the only one in this situation.  What are my options here?  Assuming deploying an on-prem Exchange Server is most likely not an option,

Thanks

sb

Hi,

If you want to install Exchange 2013, you need to prepare prepare Active Directory.

You can refer to the below link:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(v=exchg.150).aspx

I have noticed that you want to move your email to the Office 365 cloud

According to your description, I understand that the issue is related to Office 365 . This forum focuses on some general discussion about Exchange on premesis  .

I suggest we can ask a question in Office 365 forum for more help:

https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/

Thank you for your understanding.

Regards,

David 

Technically, the issue is because of dirsync, not AD FS. But yes, you need to manage the attributes on-prem, and to do so you will need to extend the schema *and* keep a local Exchange server for management purposes. You can use the free Exchange "Hybrid" edition: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2939261

I know how the above sounds, but that's the only *supported* scenario. You can do just fine with only extending the schema (i.e. installing and removing the local Exchange server) and using ADUC/ADSI Edit/PowerShell to manage the on-prem attributes, many organizations do it. But you will not be in a supported configuration.