There’s still time to put together a comprehensive plan to migrate from Office Exchange 2010 Servers before Microsoft pulls the plug on support next month, on October 13th 2020.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
In 2019 Microsoft announced that support for Exchange Server 2010 was coming to an end. The end-of-life date was originally scheduled for January of 2020, but Microsoft pushed back the date several months.
Microsoft says that on October 13th they will no longer provide technical support for problems that might occur, bug fixes for issues that are discovered and would make the server vulnerable to security incidents, and time zone updates.
WHY STAY AHEAD OF THIS?
There are serious concerns to consider if your organization is thinking about passing by the end-of-life date without an upgrade.
1. SECURITY
If you want to read more about why staying ahead of end-of-support dates are important for security, we’ve written a few articles on this subject in the past. The short of it is, vulnerabilities are found all the time and without Microsoft creating patches, your server environment is more and more susceptible to attack every day.
2. COMPLIANCE
It goes hand-in-hand with Security. If your organization has any compliance measures that need to be considered, passing by the end-of-life date would be irresponsible and reckless to the future of your organization.
3. COMPATIBILITY
Without regular updates, you will see compatibility issues. Office applications may not work or open for your employees and others, causing productivity problems. There may also be future update issues with Exchange Server 2010 that could keep the server from functioning correctly.
WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS?
Microsoft has laid out a roadmap with paths to take.
Microsoft recommends a migration to Microsoft 365. “Migrating your email to Microsoft 365 is your best and simplest option to help you retire your Exchange 2010 deployment.” says Microsoft pointing out new compliance features, Microsoft Teams, Power BI, Focused Inbox and MyAnalytics.
There are three paths Microsoft lays out for migration: Cutover Migration, Minimal hybrid Migration and Full Hybrid Migration:
Cutover Migration is for smaller organizations of fewer than 150 people and takes less than a week to complete. “The cutover migration method is great for small organizations that don’t have very many mailboxes, want to get to Microsoft 365 quickly, and don’t want to deal with some of the complexities of the other methods. But it’s also somewhat limited because it should be completed in a week or less and because it requires users to reconfigure their Outlook profiles.”
A Minimal Hybrid Migration is also for small organizations and takes a few weeks or less to complete. “Minimal hybrid migration is great for organizations that need to take more time to migrate their mailboxes to Microsoft 365, but still plan to complete the migration within a few weeks. You get some benefits of the more advanced full hybrid migration without many of the complexities.”
A Full Hybrid Migration can service an organization of any size and can take a bit longer to complete. “A full hybrid migration is one where your organization has many hundreds, up to tens of thousands, of mailboxes and you want to move some or all of them to Microsoft 365.”
To read more about each type of Migration Path, head over to this page.
***As a side-note, while some of these migration projects may take only a few weeks to complete, preparation, scheduling and outage will depend upon your environment and an entire migration project can encompass several months.
SWICKtech has done countless email server migration projects for businesses of all shapes and sizes. We’d be happy to discuss your options and help you determine the best path forward for replacing and migrating your Exchange Server 2010.
