History
Scenario: Migrate 30 User accounts to Office 365 over a slow link (5 Mbps Upload) that will take days to process. Average User Mailbox is 7GB or higher.
Solution: Decided on a Hybrid Migration to transfer mailboxes to Office 365 in batches over 2 weeks. Setup DirSync (/w Password Sync) and ADFS on single virtual server running Windows Server 2012 in Hyper-V.
Result: Successful Migration, ADFS tested and works.
However, we do not have the resources to sustain ADFS and it slows down the login for our users to Outlook Web App. Most of our users are not signing into AD; so the benefits are mitigated. We do not want to run Exchange Server locally to manage our accounts due to extra licensing cost of maintaining that install.
New Path
New Goal: Convert AD Synced Accounts to In Cloud accounts so they can be managed separate from our AD. This will rid the requirement for Exchange to be installed locally - and will allow resources to be freed from not having to run DirSync and ADFS on a separate local server.
**This must be done without losing the existing mailboxes running on Exchange Online.
Additional Information:
- Exchange Server 2010 (Last Exchange Server in AD) was uninstalled
- DirSync was uninstalled
- ADFS was uninstalled, and ADFS server crashed, so we can't contact it.
- We changed the Domain Authentication from Federated to Managed using PowerShell; and converted all the users to Standard Accounts; which required us to update all their passwords, which we did.
- At the moment ADFS and DirSync are completely disabled; Exchange is uninstalled - our users can login and work just fine, but the accounts and mailboxes cannot be edited through Office 365; and we now lack the means to modify them locally.