I know there is a bit of nuance in every migration. We are looking to migrate without utilizing the Essentials Experience on the target server. We intend to do the built-in AD integration with Office 365, where synchronization goes up to the cloud but not down.
I ask the question because most of the guides involve Essentials or Essentials Experience.
Any of your guides match that scenario? If not, is there something I should look out for? We were planning to use Migration Wiz to make the synchronization of mailboxes easier. Do you guys feel that is necessary?
Thanks,
Randy
I would add that I will be doing other SBS 2011 migrations with the same scenario... going to O365 and a standard 2016 server. Would there be a different approach?
No, from SBS 2011 the approach will be the same as in 2008.
Hello Randy,
When you are not going to use the Essentials Experience role on your 2016 Standard server it all comes down to one question, do you use Folder Redirection? If you use that we need to create a new Folder Redirection policy that applies to the new server and remove the old SBS version. If you do this data will be moved/migrated automatically to the new server and its shares (that you need to create manually) when the new policies get applied to clients.
Without the Essentials Dashboard, you need to use some other tool to sync your on-premise AD with the cloud, see Download Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect from Official Microsoft Download Center
For this particular path, you should use How to migrate from SBS 2011 to Windows Server 2016 (Essentials) but skip chapter 7 and ignore the parts where I mention the Essentials Experience role. Depending on the amount of Exchange data you can a cutover migration to Office 365 as described here How to do a cutover migration from Exchange Server 2010 on a SBS 2011 Standard to Office 365 but if you have a lot of mailboxes and data a third party tool like Migration Wiz or Codetwo will do just fine.
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The two migration kits for this project are here:
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