Case studies · Business Systems
Financial Services
users migrated to Office 365
The migration connected a legacy on-premises Exchange environment to an existing Office 365 tenant, with directory services and mail routing changing alongside the mailbox move. The Active Directory forest was still at the 2008 R2 functional level, so identity modernisation had to be coordinated with the hybrid configuration and cutover rather than treated as a separate task.
A new Windows Server domain controller was installed and configured with DNS, domain-controller roles were transferred, and the domain services were updated: FRS was migrated to DFSR, the forest functional level was raised to 2016, and Microsoft Entra Connect was configured for directory integration, password writeback and password-hash synchronisation.
The Office 365 tenant and Exchange hybrid environment were prepared through the Hybrid Configuration Wizard. Security groups and delegates were reviewed, the email domain and mail filtering were configured, DKIM was set up, and a pilot migration was used to check the approach before moving the remaining mailboxes.
Mailboxes were moved to Office 365 through the hybrid deployment. Mail-flow settings and DNS MX records were switched during an out-of-hours cutover, with standby support after the change; the old Exchange server was then decommissioned and user acceptance testing was carried out.
The on-premises Exchange mailboxes were moved to Office 365, mail flow was switched to the cloud tenant, and the old Exchange server was decommissioned. The work also brought the directory forest to the 2016 functional level and connected on-premises identity with Office 365. Configuration documentation and a UAT plan were supplied.
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