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Understanding Hybrid Deployment

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Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP2

A hybrid deployment offers organizations the ability to extend the feature-rich experience and administrative control they have with their existing on-premises Microsoft Exchange organization to the cloud. A hybrid deployment provides the seamless look and feel of a single Exchange organization between an on-premises organization and a cloud-based organization. In addition, a hybrid deployment can serve as an intermediate step to moving completely to a cloud-based Exchange organization.

Hybrid Deployment Features

A hybrid deployment enables the following features:

  • Mail routing between on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

  • Mail routing with a shared domain namespace. For example, both on-premises and cloud-based organizations use the @contoso.com SMTP domain.

  • A unified global address list, also called a “shared address book”.

  • Free/busy and calendar sharing between on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

  • Centralized control of mail flow. The on-premises organization can control mail flow for the on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

  • A single Outlook Web App URL for both the on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

  • The ability to move existing on-premises mailboxes to the cloud-based organization.

  • Centralized mailbox management using the on-premises Exchange Management Console (EMC).

  • Message tracking, MailTips, and multi-mailbox search between on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

Hybrid Deployment Components

A hybrid deployment involves several different services and components:

  • Microsoft Office 365   The Office 365 service provides a cloud-based Exchange organization as a part of its subscription service. Organizations configuring a hybrid deployment must create and configure this cloud-based Exchange organization.

  • Hybrid Server   A hybrid server is an Exchange Server 2010 server that is installed in your existing Exchange organization, and it's required for hybrid deployments. It enables messaging features and messaging delivery between your existing Exchange organization and the Office 365-based Exchange organization.

  • Microsoft Federation Gateway   The Microsoft Federation Gateway is a cloud-based service offered by Microsoft that acts as the trust broker between your on-premises Exchange 2010 organization and the cloud-based Exchange organization. Organizations configuring a hybrid deployment must create a federation trust with the gateway.

    Learn more at: Microsoft Federation Gateway

  • Active Directory Synchronization   Active Directory synchronization replicates on-premises Active Directory information for mail-enabled objects to the cloud-based organization to support the unified GAL. Organizations configuring a hybrid deployment must deploy Active Directory synchronization on a separate, on-premises server.

    Learn more at: Active Directory synchronization: Roadmap

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