trail | SMTP Port 25

A hybrid deployment provides a wonderful experience for your Office 365 deployment. It enables users to have mailboxes in your on-premises Exchange Server environment and Office 365; find one another in the global address list (GAL); share calendar; send or receive; and reply to emails, regardless of the system your mailbox.

Simulating Office 365 with Hybrid configuration and testing can be a bit challenging, unlike an exchange 2013 lab, where you build a new virtual machine, install exchange 2013, configure it and play. Office 365 hybrid configuration has certain requirements like Office 365 account, certificates, public facing on-premises Exchange, ADFS, Public facing ADFS proxy server etc.

A majority of organizations is now looking for Hybrid solution for the interesting features it offers and has become a mandatory skill set for the Exchange administrator. Microsoft offers 30 days free Office 365 Enterprise E3 account and free 30 days Widows Azure trail with a $200 credit to create and configure virtual machines. In addition to the specified trial accounts, you also need the following listed particulars to start and build your own Office 365 – Exchange 2013 Hybrid lab environment using Windows Azure

1. Domain name: Register a domain name using ‘Go daddy’. We would need to own and manage a domain DNS. You can register a domain from any ISP. With Office 365 and Go daddy, some of the DNS registration has been made automated. In this lab, we will be using the domain name “CHECKWHATSIN.COM” which is registered using Go daddy.

2. Third Party SAN Certificate: A Third Party SAN certificate is required for Exchange server and Federation server. The certificate has to match the registered domain name. We can use SAN certificate with multiple SAN or a wildcard certificate. In this lab, we will be using wild card certificate with the name – *.Checkwhatsin.com

In this first part of the article series, you will perform the tasks given below:

I. Creating and configuring Exchange On-premises Serves at Windows Azure

II. Registering and configuring Office 365 trial account

Other part of the articles are be found below

Office 365 Hybrid Configuring Using Windows Azure – Part 2

Office 365 Hybrid Configuring Using Windows Azure – Part 3

Office 365 Hybrid Configuring Using Windows Azure – Part 4

Office 365 Hybrid Configuring Using Windows Azure – Part 5

Office 365 Hybrid Configuring Using Windows Azure – Part 6

Creating and configuring Exchange On-premises Serves at Windows Azure

1. Create a Windows Azure Trail account

2. Login to the Azure portal and create:

A new Affinity Group
A new Storage and link to the affinity group
A new virtual network 3. Create two “SMALL” VM’s for Domain Controller and Exchange 2013 server with base OS Windows 2012. Shown below is the screen shot of the lab with the server named Krisdc01.cloudapp.net and KrisExch01.cloudapp.net. These are the names used to connect from internet.4. Promote the new domain controller on server Krisdc01.cloudapp.net with the new domain name ‘CHECKWHATSIN.COM’ 5. Join the server KrisExch01.cloudapp.net to the domain ‘CHECKWHATSIN.COM’ 6. Install and configure new Exchange 2013 on the server KrisExch01.cloudapp.net7. Once the Domain Controller and Exchange is installed and configured, we need to configure DNS with MX and CName record.
8. Login to Go daddy DNS manager for checkwhatsin.com
9. Create a new MX record to point to KrishExch01.cloupdapp.net to allow users to send and receive email from internet
10. Create a new CName for mail.checkwhatsin.com to point to KrisExch01.cloudapp.net. This is to allow users to connect to Outlook Web App (OWA) from internet.
11. Create a new CName record for autodiscover.checkwhatsin.com to point to KrishExch01.cloudapp.net. This is to allow users Internet users to perform autodiscover for client configuration.
12. Once the DNS is registered, we should be able perform the autodiscover and other test using Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer below
13. Create new 3 additional “SMALL” VM with Windows 2012 OS for Active Directory Federation Server (ADFS), Active Directory Federation Server Proxy (ADFS Proxy) and Directory Sync (DirSync) Server role. Below is the Windows Azure virtual machines with three additional VM – Krisadfs.cloupapp.net, KrisAdfsproxy.cloudapp.net and Krisdirsync.cloudapp.net
Registering and configuring Office 365 trial account
1. Connect to the below Office 365 URL to register for a new Office 365 Enterprise E3 account
http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans-FX102918419.aspx
2. Provided all the necessary administrator account information
3. Provide the account and the domain name to register. Verify your phone number by sending a txt message or call and click on “create an account”.
4. Below is the first look of Office 365
5. Click on the setup on the left ribbon and click on “Add domain”
6. Click on Start Step 1 to specify the domain name and confirm the ownership
7. Input the domain name as ‘Checkwhatsin.com and click on ‘Next’
8. For auto DNS configuration, click on “Confirm Ownership”.
9. It connects the Go daddy with the credentials
10. Click on “Accept” to allow Office 365 to create the new TXT record for the domain ‘Checkwhatsin.com’ and to confirm the ownership.
11. This completed the domain verification process and click “Finish” to return to the main screen
12. We can verify again by clicking on the ‘setup’ on the left bar to see checkwhatsin.com is added and status is ‘domain verified’.
13. We can also verify the TXT record entry created by Office 365 at the Go daddy DNS for the domain ‘Checkwhatsin.com’. Login to Checkwhatsin.com DNS manager to view the TXT entry for Office 365 validation.
14. From the above point 12, we still have the setup to continue. Click on complete setup to get the below page and click on “Start Step 2”
15. Select “I don’t want to add users right now” and click on Next
16. Since we will be configuring ADFS and single sign-on (SSO), we need the hold the Step 3 and revisit this part at the Part 3 of the article.
With this we have created and configured on-premises Exchange 2013 using windows Azure and also created the Office 365 trail account with the addition and configuration of new domain checkwahtsin.com.
In the next part, we will be creating and configuring ADFS and ADFS proxy servers which is deployed with the name KrisADFS.cloudapp.net and Krisproxy.cloudapp.net