Author: dominikhoefling

Troubleshooting Active Directory Federation Services

Enabling single sign-on for your users must not be a big deal. There are multiple hybrid identity authentication scenarios available to obtain single sign-on capabilities to your users:

  • Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS): single sign-on, based on one identity in your on-premises Active Directory and publishes on-premises and cloud web applications. This is the most complex scenario and often used by organizations with 250+ seats. They are not only using Office 365 applications for single sign-on, but also for other Intranet and Internet applications to achieve SSO user experience.
  • Password Hash Sync (PHS): same sign-on, which means you must authenticate again with your on-premises credentials accessing Office 365 services.
  • Pass-through authentication (PTA): single sign-on, allows your users to sign in to Azure Active Directory directly validating the users’ passwords against your on-premises Active Directory.
  • Seamless single sign-on: single sign-on, automatically signs your users in when they are on their corporate devices connected to your corporate network. Can be combined with either PHS or PTA.

When should I use AD FS instead of other hybrid authentication methods?

Read more at the atwork blog.

Microsoft Ignite 2017: BRK3155 – Thrive in as an enterprise organization in Microsoft Exchange Online

Large enterprise customers often have unique and specialized requirements for adoption Exchange Online. This session showcases the lifecycle of an enterprise customer leveraging features designed just for them. Demo and some several new features will be covered, such as Mailbox Plans, Client Access Rules, on send event APIs, and a first look at technology for mergers and divestitures.

The full recorded session can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN6lsxKRrJQ&t=1503s

This blog post covers a summary of the session. Continue reading “Microsoft Ignite 2017: BRK3155 – Thrive in as an enterprise organization in Microsoft Exchange Online” →

Microsoft Ignite 2017: BRK3154 – The epic Exchange preferred architecture debate

What is the best, DAS or SAN? Are SSDs on the way in or are slow spindles here to stay? Should you give up and migrate to the cloud? What about virtualization? This session covers the various Exchange architectures that can be deployed on-premises and hybrid.

Announcements:

  • Exchange 2016 now supports up to 192GB of memory
  • Item Recovery Enhancements20170927_163343930_iOS

Sample questions:

  1. Should I follow the PA? Yes. If it is possible, follow the PA. This is the tested and best practices solution from Microsoft running in Exchange Online. This simplifies the operation process in case of outage, failures, etc.
  2. Should I deploy SSD? No. Jeff Guillet mentioned a good example for this. If you are using SSD’s for Exchange, it is like you are driving a Ferrari on a gravel road.
  3. Should I virtualize Exchange? Yes and no. Of course, you can virtualize Exchange. Be sure that you use the calculator for virtualization 1:1 as you would do it for physical servers. Physical servers are more easier to manage and deploy because virtualization needs some more things to do.
  4. What should I do if I plan to have a hybrid deployment with O365? Follow the same approach as you would do it for an on-premises environment. If all your mailboxes are migrated to Exchange Online, use a single Exchange server for recipient management purposes only.
  5. What size mailbox should I deploy? Are 1GB mailboxes valid anymore? You already get 25GB mailboxes for free today and simple JBOD storage is a very low cost factor.
  6. Third-party archiving solutions or keep in Exchange? The Microsoft perspective is that archive mailboxes should be retain in Exchange. In case of big mailboxes and Outlook OST slider, there is no reason to use archive mailboxes anymore. If you are having strict compliance regulations for archiving, you can use Exchange, Exchange Online, or of course third-party archiving solutions.

Microsoft Ignite 2017: BRK4029 – Inside Exchange Online

Matt Gossage and Ananth Sundararaj show how Exchange Online works. The engineering leaders who design and build the infrastructure reveal the secrets of deep neural networks, machine learning, substrate, shards, and much more. They also share how these mystical creatures actually impact IT pros and users of Exchange and Outlook.

Continue reading “Microsoft Ignite 2017: BRK4029 – Inside Exchange Online” →

Microsoft Ignite 2017 – Keynote summary notes

      • Day 1 was the traditionally Keynote day of Microsoft Ignite 2017
      • Julia:
        • Automatically translation of the Keynote into 12 languages based on AI
      • Satya:
        • Digital Transformation of every life and industry
        • Enabling Digital Transformation20170925_131603154_iOS
        • Microsoft 365 describes the modern workplace
          • Mixed Reality and Hololens and Oasis Headsets as part of Microsoft 365
          • The frontier of new collaboration
      • Raanah (Modern Workplace)
        • Demonstration how Ford is using Mixed Reality with Hololens with Rachel and Terry
        • With Microsoft Teams, the team is alerted that someone created a note with Hololens
        • They will be able to join a call for all people around the world an all are seeing the same experiences with Hololens
        • Empowering people to collaborate in the same shared experience anywhere around the world20170925_132223481_iOS 1
      • Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Graph
        • It represents or it captures the knowledge for your people in their relationship with other people inside and outside your organization
        • First integration with Microsoft 365 and Graph was LinkedIn
        • For example, you can see all the others in your network who are attending Ignite
        • Using latest technologies with AI for Microsoft Graph
      • Li-Chen Miller (Modern Workplace)
        • Shows an example with LinkedIn Graph with Microsoft 365 Graph
        • Search
          • More intelligent, more personal, and more contextualized for search across Microsoft 365
          • Bing for Business and a direct connection to Office 365, Delve, and Azure Active Directory can transform all information in one place20170925_133623640_iOS
          • Bing for Business use machine reading comprehension and deep learning models for searching specific documents, policies, files, and other stored information
          • Cortana can connect to Office 365 and automatically set the auto email responder, if you tell her, you want to schedule vacation for a specific date and time
          • Bing for Business is available for a private preview today
      • AI-First and Mixed Reality applications, for example Trimble, using both Azure and mixed reality
      • Tetra Pak ins in a food packaging and processing for liquid food industry and is using Mixed Reality and Hololens
      • Land O’Lakes
      • University of Cambridge
      • Epic is using Azure, 200 mio records are stored in Azure. Detect long before medical problems happens.
      • Intelligent Cloud and intelligent Edge applications is happening today.

Limitation of Exchange Hybrid Centralized Mail Transport

I recently had a curious behavior in my customers Exchange 2010 SP3 hybrid environment with centralized mail transport for Exchange 2010 SP3 Edge servers enabled.

Before I describe the topic in more detail I would like to say thank you to the guys from Microsoft: Timothy Heeney, Scott Landry and Tom Kern helped me with my ‘little’ mail flow problem . Appreciate your help.

My customer is using a smtp gateway for external mail flow as usual. Some of the mailboxes have configured smtp forwarding like ForwardingAddress (mail contact) and ForwardingSMTPAddress (external smtp address directly set on the mailbox).

Read more at the atwork.blog