Introduce an “passive” Exchange 2013 in Exchange 2010 environment without user or administration impact.

Hi

We wish to introduce an Exchange 2013 server in our existing Exchange 2010 environment.
The Exchange 2013 server is only needed for migration purposes where we wish to leverage the new features of the migration-batch functionality.

Its important that the Exchange 2013 server will not have any visible impact on the Exchange 2010 environment, or take over any functionality, right now, since the customer wish to stay on 2010.

Can you guys come up with anything to be aware of?

  • Oblivious we disable the Autodiscover SCP for the Exchange 2013 server, so that the clients will not hit this server. Nor will we point any URLs to the Exchange 2013
  • I can see that a new Default Offline Address Book (Exch2013) is created and set as default when EX2013 is installed. We will change this back to the default EX2010.
  • The server will properly take part in the Shadow Redundancy feature, and is doesnt seem to be possible to exclude the server or avoid, unless disabling Shadow Reduncancy.

I can only come up with these 3 things that will have a "direct" impact on the environment, but any input will be highly appreciated!

BR,

Martin


February 16th, 2015 11:51am

Make sure OAB is defined on all 2010 DB's: http://blogs.technet.com/b/mconeill/archive/2014/12/31/exchange-2013-impact-on-legacy-oab-settings.aspx

Mike

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February 16th, 2015 9:12pm

Hi Mike

That's a good point, and it could easily be missed in a large environment - so thank you!
I still encourages all of you to drop a comment if you can think for anything else to be aware of!

BR,
Martin

February 17th, 2015 2:59am

First of all, I definitely don't recommend to introduce Exchange 2013 server while you're not migrating to Exchange 2013.

Back to your question.

1. Exchange 2010 see 2013 mailbox server as hub transport server. So it's possible for the email to be routed by the new server. Disabling the transport service should prevent it.

2. Managed Availability may probe legacy Exchange servers. Make sure you disable the health manager service.

3. I'm sure there are other impact which I can't identify at this moment.

Once again, my recommendation is not to install it at all.

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February 17th, 2015 3:25am

Hi,

I agree with Li Zhens suggestion. If you dont migrate from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013, we can disable add services in Exchange 2013 and dont use it any more.

If you want that the Exchange 2013 server will not have any visible impact on the Exchange 2010 environment, or take over any functionality, please keep the published server to pointed to Exchange 2010. Then the original configuration in Exchange 2010 would not be changed to the new configuration in Exchange 2013.

If you want to use Exchange 2013, then we can point the published server to Exchange 2013 and configure the virtual directories in Exchange 2013. Though all mailboxes are still located in Exchange 2010, all external requests would be proxy or redirected from CAS 2013 TO CAS 2010 automatically.

For more information about Client Connectivity in an Exchange 2013 Coexistence Environment, please refer to:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/03/12/client-connectivity-in-an-exchange-2013-coexistence-environment.aspx

Regards,

February 17th, 2015 4:17am

First of all, I definitely don't recommend to introduce Exchange 2013 server while you're not migrating to Exchange 2013.

Back to your question.

1. Exchange 2010 see 2013 mailbox server as hub transport server. So it's possible for the email to be routed by the new server. Disabling the transport service should prevent it.

2. Managed Availability may probe legacy Exchange servers. Make sure you disable the health manager service.

3. I'm sure there are other impact which I can't identify at this moment.

Once again, my recommendation is not to install it at all.

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February 17th, 2015 11:21am

Hi,

Any updates?

Regards,

February 20th, 2015 3:55am

You could also try putting the Exchange 2013 server into maintenance mode so it wont participate at all

Set-ServerComponentState <ServerName> -Component ServerWideOffline -State Inactive -Requester Maintenance

http://blogs.technet.com/b/nawar/archive/2014/03/30/exchange-2013-maintenance-mode.aspx

Andy

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February 20th, 2015 4:31am

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