Office 365 Hybrid Deployment With Exchange 2010 SP2 – Part 4

We have signed up for Office 365 E3 trial, configured ADFS 2.0, installed Microsoft Online Services Module for PowerShell, connected to Office 365 & configured the public domain for SSO & enabled AD synchronization so far. Read part one, two & three here. In this part, we will install & configure Directory Sync tool.

Sign into Office 365 portal, navigate to “Users” on the left hand menu, click “setup” next to AD synchronization & download the correct version of Directory Synchronization (Dir Sync) tool from step 4. You cannot install the tool on a domain controller and hence a separate server is required.

Launch the Dir Sync setup file (on a dedicated server).

Select the location and click next.

Wait for a minute or two as the tool gets installed.

Click Finish. Notice that the checkbox to configure the tool is enabled. Uncheck it if you don’t want to configure the tool right now.

The Dir Sync configuration wizard launches as soon as you click the “finish” button.

Enter the Office 365 admin credentials and click next.

Enter the on-premise admin credentials (will need enterprise admin rights) and click next.

Make sure “enable exchange hybrid deployment” is checked and click next.

Make sure “synchronize directories now” is selected if you want to synchronize AD with the cloud straight away and click finish. The time the sync process takes depends on the number of objects you have in AD.

If you don’t want to synchronize now or want to force a sync (later on), run the configuration wizard again. After the initial run, the directory is sync’d every 3 hours by default and you will get an email if there is any issue with the process.

As mine is a test lab with only few users and groups, the sync only took few minutes.

This concludes part4. Stay tuned for part 5, where we will configure hybrid deployment (the new feature in 2010 SP2) on our on-premise Exchange and add Office 365 in the 2010 EMC.