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Exchange Team Blog
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Deprecation of Remote PowerShell (RPS) for New Exchange Online Tenants

The_Exchange_Team's avatar
The_Exchange_Team
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Mar 07, 2023

Update 3/27/2023: For more information on this subject please see our newer blog post.

We previously announced the general availability of REST-based Exchange Online PowerShell v3 module (September 2022) and the deprecation of Remote PowerShell (RPS) Protocol (December 2022).

Today, we are announcing that starting April 1, 2023, we will start blocking RPS connections for all tenants created on or after April 1, 2023. After April 1, 2023, new tenants will not be able to use RPS when connecting to Exchange Online and will have to use the v3 module with REST cmdlets instead.

The overall RPS deprecation plan we announced in December applies to all Exchange Online customers connecting with RPS. We recommend that all customers move to the v3 module, which is more secure and more reliable than the older PowerShell modules.

Connect-IPPSSession (for Security & Compliance cmdlets) will remain RPS-based and is not affected by this deprecation.

What are the next steps?

If you are using New-PSSession to establish an RPS connection: 

  • Install the latest Exchange Online Management v3 module from here.
  • Use Connect-ExchangeOnline instead of New-PSSession to establish connection.

If you have installed any module earlier than v3:

  • Uninstall previous versions of ExchangeOnlineManagement module by running "Uninstall-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement" from an elevated (admin) command prompt.
  • Install the latest Exchange Online Management v3 module from here.
  • Discontinue all use of the UseRPSSession parameter.

There are some new features and minor breaking changes in the v3 module. Please keep them in mind while testing any scripts with v3 module. You can read more about these changes here.

We heard your concerns related to deprecation timelines. We will soon release a tool to allow tenant admins to request an extension to use RPS for a little longer. We will keep you posted.

We are excited to provide you with a more secure and performant environment, and we remain committed to our journey to empower you with the most modern features and tools. If you have questions/feedback, please leave comments here or email us at RPSdeprecation@service.microsoft.com.

Exchange Online Manageability Team

Updated Apr 10, 2023
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  • inkybuck's avatar
    inkybuck
    Copper Contributor
    Mar 10, 2023

    My company has a tool that doesn't use any module, it connects to Exchange Online PowerShell directly using RPS. It's run by our customers on their tenants, so the tenants may be new ones. We had thought we had until the end of June to fix this, so this is quite a change.

  • lennyquest's avatar
    lennyquest
    Copper Contributor
    Mar 08, 2023

    The_Exchange_Team 

    Quick question on this unexpected announcement, If we are using the V2 module, and we do not use UseRPSSession parameter when connecting to EXO, does this announcement also mean new tenants created after April 1 will also stop people from using V2 Module as well?

  • brogyi's avatar
    brogyi
    Brass Contributor
    Mar 09, 2023

    This is not unexpected. This is known for months from now on. Why do you not want to update the modul to V3?

  • lennyquest's avatar
    lennyquest
    Copper Contributor
    Mar 09, 2023

    I am well aware of it, just that the date was moved up to April which was previously stated as June 30th. 

  • Nino_Bilic's avatar
    Nino_Bilic
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Mar 09, 2023

    Basically, what we have announced here is that new tenants (starting in April) will not be able to use RPS by default. The rest of the timelines (for current tenants) have not changed. But new tenants created in April would need to use v3 module from the get go to use PowerShell (without the -UseRPSSession parameter).

  • SunipDutta's avatar
    SunipDutta
    Copper Contributor
    Mar 11, 2023

    Hello Ms,

     

    Kindly assist

     

    We are connecting to exchange online via a proxy server. For this, I use 

     

    $sessionOpt = New-PSSessionOption -ProxyAccessType IEConfig

    Connect-ExchangeOnline -ShowProgress $true -PSSessionOption $sessionOpt -ShowBanner:$false

     

    Documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/connect-exchangeonline?view=exchange-ps) stated, that "The PSSessionOption parameter specifies the PowerShell session options to use in your connection to Exchange Online. This parameter works only if you also use the UseRPSSession switch in the same command."

     

    Now that RPS is deprecating - how will I connect in future? Will we be impacted? How do we connect from behind a proxy ?

  • Pernacho's avatar
    Pernacho
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 06, 2023

    Tenants that have RPS disabled can not use the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard anymore. Maybe somebody can tell the guys from HCW about the change, so they might make it work again? Or is it manually migrating with the deadline for Exchange 2013 this Tuesday?

     

    I would be really happy if Microsoft started testing things before release again. This testing on the customer thing they do for a while now starts to be really annoying 😞

     

    Details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/12cjzum/problems_running_microsoft_365_hybrid/

  • jhjacobs81's avatar
    jhjacobs81
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 20, 2023

    The stupidity of this all baffles me.

     

    I have spend half this afternoon trying to fix this problem, only to discover that two teams inside one company fail to work together?

    So at one end they advise you to use the HCW, and on the other end they simply break it. And here we are advising clients to migrate to the Microsoft cloud because its easier.. 

     

    Following the above reddit link provides a solution. unfortunatly that only gets us so far as the "Hybrid Agent Setup" part. at the point of "Validating Hybrid Agent for Exchange usage" it still errors out.