r/exchangeserver

Hello,

I am looking into migrating a single business email account from Network Solutions to Exchange Online.

• Current situation:
• own domain; one user and one mailbox;
• Network Solutions with only 1 GB;
• Outlook Classic configured via POP3;
• a single local PST file containing approximately 15 GB and 50,000 messages;
• PST backups already in place;
• Microsoft 365 Personal, renewed annually;
• Outlook Classic and 1 TB of OneDrive included in the personal plan;
• three years’ subscription to the Network Solutions service still paid for;
• need to retain the same email address.

I understand that Microsoft 365 Personal does not include Exchange Online for a business domain. I am considering keeping the Personal plan for the applications and OneDrive, and subscribing to Exchange Online Plan 1 solely for the business mailbox.

Questions:

1. Would Exchange Online Plan 1 be sufficient for this scenario?
2. Is it sensible to combine Microsoft 365 Personal for the applications with Exchange Online Plan 1 for email?
3. What is the best method for importing a 15 GB PST file containing around 50,000 messages?
4. Would you use the Outlook Classic import feature or Microsoft’s PST import service?
5. How would you avoid duplicates between the PST and messages still on the server?
6. Does an IMAP migration make sense if most of the archive is already in the PST?
7. How would you handle contacts, the calendar and sent messages?
8. What checks would you carry out on the PST before importing it?
9. How would you validate the migration once it’s complete?
10. How would you configure MX records, Autodiscover, SPF, DKIM and DMARC?
11. Would you keep the domain with Network Solutions and just migrate the email?
12. Would you migrate now or wait for the remaining three years of the contract?
13. For a single mailbox, would you carry out the migration yourself or engage a Microsoft partner?

I’d appreciate hearing about practical experiences with similar migrations.

Hello,

I need some ideas about what might be causing this.

I'm running an Exchange cluster with a load balancer.

Every day at after noon, some (not all!) MAPI clients lose their connection (not all at once, and they establish the connection on/off), and sending and receiving emails takes longer.

There is no unusual server load, no request attacks, backups or anything similar.

The problem started around the time Exchange Hybrid was enabled.

Any ideas?

I have an old 2016 hybrid exchange server (yes I know it’s EOL). Not wanting to update to SE, can I just set my users to use the cloud as an SOA for exchange and shut down the hybrid?

We are using Entra Connect for sync so I understand write back may be limited but that shouldn’t be the end of the world right?

I assume user creation would be create in AD -> sync -> create Exchange mailbox in cloud? Any good documentation on this?