Are you running a hybrid Active Directory with mailboxes fully migrated to Exchange Online? Then, chances are you’re looking at options to remove your on-premises Exchange Server without compromising ease of management.
Five Exchange On-Premises Challenges
If you have moved your mail-flow to Exchange Online, there are several obvious reasons why you’d want to get rid of Exchange on-premises:
- It consumes power and hardware (or virtual) resources.
- It requires constant monitoring and patching.
- It requires an OS license and possibly third-party licenses for AV, monitoring, and backup.
- It’s a frequent target of zero-day exploits that often incur unplanned work hours, and, potentially, can be devastating to your entire business.
- It embodies yet another interface on top of ADUC, various Admin Center consoles, and PowerShell modules to do (what should be) simple user management.
The main reason why companies hold on to Exchange on-premises is simply to be able to manage mailbox attributes more effectively:
Exchange on-premises offers some sanity checks, e.g., when editing email addresses (proxyAddresses). These checks involve email address syntax validation, checking for conflicts, and enforcing the mandatory single-instance primary SMTP alias.
An alternative to Exchange on-premises is to use one of the “raw attribute” editing tools like ADSIEdit or AD Users & Computers in advanced view mode. For some, this approach works well. For many, it is error-prone and causes numerous hard-to-troubleshoot issues.
Easy Management of ProxyAddresses
EasyEntra is a tool that consolidates hybrid management by allowing you to work from a single console instead of a mix of consoles like AD Users & Computers, Exchange on-premises, Microsoft 365 Admin Center, EXO Admin Center, EXO PowerShell, and Microsoft Entra Connect PowerShell.
The latest release, EasyEntra v1.1.2, introduces an On-Prem-Only Freemium mode that allows for complete management of on-premises AD attributes of hybrid mailboxes and distribution groups. With EasyEntra, you get an improved UI with the same sanity checks as Exchange on-premises. This means error-prone ProxyAddresses editing will be a thing of the past:
Adaptive Password Generator
With EasyEntra, you get an auto-generated, random, and complex password. Although the password is complex it is still combined in a way that makes it easy to read and communicate to the end-user.
You can modify the auto-generated password according to your requirements. Once you have set the password, EasyEntra will adapt to the password length when generating consecutive passwords.
Easy One-Click Synchronization of Microsoft Entra Connect
In addition to mailbox attribute management, the new EasyEntra On-Prem-Only Edition offers one-click synchronization of Microsoft Entra Connect (Azure AD Connect).
Whenever you make changes to on-premises AD attributes, you typically look at 30 minutes waiting time before the changes propagate to Entra ID. If you want to speed things up, you need to manually trigger the synchronization, either by logging in to the Microsoft Entra Connect Server or by establishing a remote PowerShell session.
And you’ll probably find yourself googling the syntax of the sync command unless you use it frequently:
Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType DeltaWith the EasyEntra one-click synchronization feature, you can easily trigger a synchronization whenever you want to propagate your changes to the cloud:
Have a look at the EasyEntra Installation and Configuration Guide, section 2.4.4, to see how you can safely delegate the ability to do remote synchronization to your first-level support team.
Fast and Advanced AD Queries
Another cool feature that you get for free with the EasyEntra On-Prem-Only Freemium Edition is the ability to do fast AD searches.
In EasyEntra, you get AD search results as you type. Additionally, the search results are a bit more comprehensive than searches from AD Users & Computers:
EasyEntra also supports LDAP queries directly in the search field.
As search results are generated as you type, you can prototype your LDAP queries and test various search filters extremely fast.
Also, EasyEntra supports “relaxed LDAP queries,” which eliminate the need to remember illogical attribute names and weird OIDs.
To give an example, you can search for:
(disabled=true)instead of using cumbersome OIDs:
(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)Look at this support article for a comprehensive list of friendly LDAP queries supported by EasyEntra.
Access ProxyAddresses and Advanced Properties From Search Results
If you have already eliminated Exchange on-premises and are editing proxyAddresses directly, you probably know these pains:
- The Attribute Editor tab is not available in search results for AD Users & Computers; therefore, you must browse your OU structure each time you need to view and edit proxyAddresses.
- Editing proxyAddresses directly is error-prone, and junior IT can easily make hard-to-troubleshoot mistakes.
With EasyEntra, you have full access to proxyAddresses and other advanced attributes in search results, and the proxyAddresses editor is very user-friendly and safe to use:
User Onboarding and Offboarding
Another awesome feature available in the free On-Prem-Only Edition is the fully automated user onboarding and user offboarding:
The Settings in the free On-Prem-Only Edition are limited to on-prem attributes but still allow for effective and consistent procedures.
How to Get Started
If you’re ready to dramatically improve your first-level user support and live happily without Exchange on-premises, download the EasyEntra On-Prem-Only Freemium Edition here.
There are no changes to your infrastructure and no need for services or service accounts. You can install and configure EasyEntra literally in a few seconds.
Contact the EasyEntra team for more information or an online demo.
