One of my recent projects was to implement a new Highly Available Exchange 2016 environment for a customer who was upgrading from Exchange 2010. When Exchange 2016 was in place, we then had to create  hybrid to Office 365. Below are some really useful PowerShell Commands I used during the implementation.

Installing Exchange 2016 Pre Requisites 

Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Server-Media-Foundation, 
NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, 
RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface, RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt, 
RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, 
Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, 
Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, 
Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, 
Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, 
Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, 
Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation, 
RSAT-ADDS

Collecting Virtual Directory Details 

Outlook Anywhere

Get-OutlookAnywhere -AdPropertiesonly | Select server,Internalhostname,
Externalhostname

Outlook Web Access

Get-OWAVirtualDirectory -AdPropertiesOnly | Select Server,InternalURL,
ExternalURL

Exchange Control Panel

Get-ECPVirtualDirectory -AdPropertiesOnly | Select Server,InternalURL,
ExternalURL

Outlook Address Book

Get-OABVirtualDirectory -AdPropertiesOnly | Select Server,InternalURL,
ExternalURL

Web Services

Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -AdPropertiesOnly | Select Server,
InternalURL,ExternalURL

MAPI

Get-MAPIVirtualDirectory -AdPropertiesOnly | Select Server,InternalURL,
ExternalURL

Active Sync

Get-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory -AdPropertiesOnly | Select Server,
InternalURL,ExternalURL

AutoDiscover

Collecting the AutoDiscover URI for Exchange 2010 Servers in the environment

Get-ClientAccessServer -identity SERVERNAME|select Name,
AutodiscoverServiceInternalURI |FL

Setting the AutoDiscover URI on the newly installed Exchange 2016 Server

Set-ClientAccessService -identity SERVERNAME -AutodiscoverServiceInternalURI 
https://mail.domainname.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

Exchange 2016 CU7 Hybrid Gotcha!!!

So after a successful deployment of Exchange 2016 the next step was to create a hybrid to Office 365 Exchange Online, Simple as Exchange 2016 was “Born in the cloud” according to Microsoft. NOT SO!!! – I downloaded the latest version of Exchange 2016 which at the time was CU7, but when configuring the hybrid it would just sit at adding Federated Domain.

A bug slipped into Exchange 2016 CU7 which prevents the HCW from completing. The HCW fails to get past the domain ownership validation:

No matter how hard you try, you can’t get past this screen.

Fortunately CU8 was release 19th December 2017 – So I spent the next day patching my newly installed Exchange environment. – then completing the Hybrid configuration.