{"id":7440,"date":"2020-11-09T10:46:04","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T10:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rax-stg-wp-aws.com\/blogs\/using-an-exchange-management-server-with-office-365\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T19:28:40","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T19:28:40","slug":"using-an-exchange-management-server-with-office-365","status":"publish","type":"blogs","link":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/blogs\/using-an-exchange-management-server-with-office-365\/","title":{"rendered":"Using an Exchange Management Server with Office 365"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nMicrosoft Office 365\u00ae offers a wide assortment of great features to improve productivity,&nbsp;collaboration, security, device management, and so much more. For IT people, this&nbsp;adds another layer of management, including how to manage those users.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTE:&nbsp;<\/strong>This post is specifically for companies using Exchange solely as a Management&nbsp;server. It does not pertain to companies using a full Hybrid Exchange configuration with&nbsp;on-premises Exchange and Office 365.<\/p>\n<p>You can manage users in Office 365 through many methods, but this brings up the question:&nbsp;what is the best solution based on your current configuration and what you need to manage?&nbsp;Microsoft Azure\u00ae; Active Directory Connect (AAD Connect) is a great solution when you&nbsp;need to use your on-premises Microsoft Active Directory with your Office 365 tenant.<\/p>\n<p>When you enable AAD Connect for a tenant and synchronize a user from the on-premises Microsoft&nbsp;Active Directory, you must manage most of the attributes from on-premises because you can&#8217;t manage them from Exchange Online. There are third-party methods or ADSI Edit to manage these&nbsp;attributes on-premises. Still, Microsoft states the supported hybrid method is to use an&nbsp;Exchange Management server in addition to your Active Directory. You primarily use the&nbsp;Exchange Management Server (EMS) to synchronize the Exchange attributes of your Active&nbsp;Directory users by extending the schema in Active Directory and providing an interface to<br \/>\nmanage these attributes more easily (Exchange Admin Center).&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are some of the Exchange attributes syncing from On-Premise?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some Exchange attributes include the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&nbsp;Alternate email addresses (proxy address)<\/li>\n<li>&nbsp;Primary SMTP address<\/li>\n<li>&nbsp;Hidden From Global Address List<\/li>\n<li>&nbsp;Custom Attributes<\/li>\n<li>&nbsp;Legacy Exchange DN<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s best practice to set up an additional server (physical or virtual) to run EMS.&nbsp;Luckily, this doesn&#8217;t require the same amount of resources compared to Exchange servers&nbsp;hosting actual production mailboxes. Using a lightweight VM and the Hybrid Configuration&nbsp;with Office365 drastically reduces operational costs. EMS still requires Windows licensing costs but does not require Exchange licensing as long as you are running Exchange Server&nbsp;2013, 2016, and mailboxes are solely on your Office365 tenant. If you have any questions&nbsp;on licensing, consult Microsoft or your licensing specialist for correct guidance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you need another server for my Exchange Management Server, what are the server specifications?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>VM Minimum Specs:<\/li>\n<li>OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 or Server 2016. Server 2019 does not support Exchange 2016.<\/li>\n<li>Processor cores: 4 recommended.<\/li>\n<li>Memory: Between 12GB and 16GB.<\/li>\n<li>Disk space: 100 GB recommended.<\/li>\n<li>Active Directory domain and forest functional level is 2008R2 or later<\/li>\n<li>Network<\/li>\n<li>Server must be on the same network as the Active Directory Domain and a member of the&nbsp;domain.<\/li>\n<li>Must be able to contact all of the domains in the forest on TCP port 389.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Technical tidbits<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Keep the following tech tidbits in mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>You need the Exchange Management server to extend the Active Directory Schema for the Exchange Attributes.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Exchange users are displayed as 365 Mailbox\/Remote Mailbox on-premises and will show up as Mailboxes in Office365.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>You can use the on-premises Exchange Server as a mail relay for your on-premises applications and devices, such as fax machines and printers, which send e-mails.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Using an Exchange Management server in addition to your Microsoft Azure Active Directory&nbsp;Connect is currently the best option for managing your Exchange Online users in Office 365. You can manage your users much easier outside of ADSI Edit or other third-party tools with&nbsp;the Exchange Admin Center GUI and Exchange Management Shell. While an on-premises Exchange Management server has other benefits, such as mail relaying, this configuration does have its flaws. Admins must pay the additional overhead infrastructure and Windows Server&nbsp;licensing costs, and it requires additional knowledge of the on-premises Exchange, which&nbsp;will become obsolete shortly. Microsoft is looking to remove this requirement&nbsp;in the future, but in the meantime, EMS is your best hybrid solution option for ease of use and minimized costs. Looking further ahead, consider ditching on-premises identity management and switching to Cloud-Only Identity and Access Management.<\/p>\n<p>There are many advantages to cloud computing and cloud-based identity management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using an Exchange Management Server with Office 365<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7442,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","nid":"26419","content_type":"blog","created_by":"10130","authored_on":"2023-12-28T10:46:04+00:00","field_article_industries":"","tag_category":"Technical","field_blog_author_text":"by Rackspace Technology Staff","seo_description":"Manage Office 365 users using an Exchange Management Server. Practical solutions for user management and configuration needs.\r\n","field_featured_image":"","insights_image":"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_technical_images\/26419-insights_image-microsoft-technical-blog-1-insights.jpg","field_partners":"","rxt_platforms":"Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365","product":"","publisheddate":"2020-11-09T10:46:04","rxt_solutions":"Email & Productivity","opengraph_tag":"","x_tag":"","teaser_flag":"Technical Blog","seo_titile":"Exchange Management Server with Office 365 | Rackspace","field_topics":"","field_slug":"using-an-exchange-management-server-with-office-365","footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-7440","blogs","type-blogs","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-technical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/7440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blogs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/7440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7441,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/7440\/revisions\/7441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}