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Exchange Team Blog
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Microsoft Extending End of Support for Exchange Server 2010 to October 13th, 2020

The_Exchange_Team's avatar
Sep 16, 2019

After investigating and analyzing the deployment state of an extensive number of Exchange customers we have decided to move the end of Extended Support for Exchange Server 2010 from January 14th 2020 to October 13th 2020.

Our commitment to meeting the evolving needs of our customers is as strong as ever, and we recognize discontinuing support for a product that has been as popular and reliable as Exchange Server 2010 can be an adjustment. We also know that some of you are in the midst of upgrades to a newer version of Exchange Server on-premises, or more transformative migrations to the cloud with Office 365 and Exchange Online. With this in mind, we are extending end of support to October 13th 2020 to give Exchange Server 2010 customers more time to complete their migrations. This extension also aligns with the end of support for Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

After October 13th 2020, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support for problems that may occur including: bug fixes for issues that are discovered and that may impact the stability and usability of the server, security fixes for vulnerabilities that are discovered and that may make the server vulnerable to security breaches, and time zone updates. Your installation of Exchange 2010 will, of course, continue to run after this date; however, due to the changes and potential  end of support risks, we strongly recommend you migrate from Exchange 2010 as soon as possible.

As a reminder, if Exchange Server 2010 is running on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, it's important to consider how you will obtain security updates for the underlying operating system too. Please read more about your options here.

Please know that we can help. If you have a complex deployment, or if you simply don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to a project like this, there are plenty of ways to get help.

  • Firstly, if you are migrating to Office 365 and Exchange Online, you may be eligible to use the free Microsoft FastTrack service. FastTrack provides best practices, tools, and resources to make migration to Office 365 and Exchange Online as seamless as possible. Best of all, you have access to a support engineer that will walk you through your migration, from planning and design all the way to migrating the last mailbox.
  • Secondly, if you run into any problems during your migration to Office 365 and you are not eligible for FastTrack, or if you are migrating to a newer version of Exchange Server, Microsoft can still help. Try Microsoft support or the Exchange Technical Community.
  • Thirdly, you also might choose to engage a partner to help you. We have a great number of partners with deep skills in Exchange, and we’re sure one of them will be able to help you. You can browse a list of Exchange partners at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/solution-providers/home to find one in your location or that has skills in your industry.

Clearly, we think moving to Exchange Online and Office 365 is a good idea. We really do believe that’s where you’ll get access to the most secure and productive software with the lowest TCO. But over and above all of that, it gets you out of the upgrade business. If you migrate fully to Office 365 you really don’t need to worry about ‘big bang’ version upgrades any more. You just have to keep a much smaller number of on-premises servers up to date, and you’re good.

If you do want to stay on-premises don’t forget that you cannot upgrade directly from Exchange 2010 on-premises to Exchange Server 2019. You can upgrade to Exchange 2013 or 2016 directly from Exchange 2010 and we recommend you upgrade to Exchange 2016 if you have the choice.

Greg Taylor

Director of Product Marketing - Exchange Server/Online

Updated Sep 19, 2019
Version 4.0
  • <edited, and apologies for any confusion>

     

    Sascha Schmatz  - Correct. Exchange Server 2010 is also supported on Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 (with Update Rollup 26 for SP3 as we stated here "we’re announcing here that we will support Exchange Server 2010 installed on Windows Server 2012 R2 with the upcoming release of Update Rollup 26 for Exchange Server 2010 SP3. We’re doing that so if you really want to add another Exchange 2010 server to your org, on Windows Server 2012 R2, you can.")

     

    We really don't think customers should start re-deploying 2010 on top of 2012 or 2012 R2 just to avoid the ESU though - that's an awful lot of work. But if a new 2010 server for some reason has to be added to the org, then doing it on 2012 R2 makes sense. 

     

    Yes to the other scenarios. Exchange 2010 remains supported until Oct 13, 2020. 

  • Steve_Pogue's avatar
    Steve_Pogue
    Brass Contributor

    We are in the camp that migrated from Exchange 2010 to Office 365.

    We have now completed the migration of all mailboxes and now wish to Decommission the Hybrid setup and also need to keep the AD Sync.

    Microsoft states that we need to keep one exchange server to be supported but our one and only server is Exchange 2010 running on 2008 R2 so we need to decommission them. Updating the server and/or upgrading the on prem exchange server is out of the question.

    There was some talk at Ignite 2017 about creating a Hybrid Connector that would allow the removal of the last onprem exchange server.  Is Microsoft going to move forward on this idea?

  • You should probably mention Exchange 2010 can also run on Windows 2012 (non R2 version) - just as on option to avoid lack of support for Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2.

     

    So this support extension of Exchange 2010 also includes scenarios with Exchange Online like:

    - legacy public folder migrations to Exchange Online

    - pure Exchange 2010 hybrid installations

  • Nick666's avatar
    Nick666
    Copper Contributor

    This is great news ! But correct me if I am wrong, most people who have 2010 exchange, it is installed on windows server 2008 R2 which has no more support, so the extension isn't of any use. 

  • Steve_Pogue's avatar
    Steve_Pogue
    Brass Contributor

    So here we are with Exchange 2010 end of support coming soon on October 13, 2020 and no supported way to decommision last exchange server.
    so now we are attempting to install an Exchange 2016 server on Server 2016 to replace the 2010 server.
    Since the Exchange 2016 server ISO now insists on detecting for Hybrid environments, complexity has been introduced to the Schema update phase causing setup.exe to fail.


    There does not seem to be a clear path to get 2016 successfully installed.

    Exchange Online support refuses to help us as they state that this is an issue for the Exchange Onprem team.
    We are not an enterprise customer and thus do not have support fo onprem exchange, however we have support for Exchange Online.
    setup.exe is failing within communications to exchange online so they should support us.
    We don't even want to have an onprem Exchange server but Microsoft has made this a requirement for the admin tools.

    Currently have Full Hydrid Exchange 2010 - Office 365 environment. Working great.
    Need to decommision exchange 2010 server and replace with exchange 2016 hybrid only.
    trying to install exchange 2016 CU17 ISO on a fresh Windows Server 2016 install
    all prerequisites done according to :
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/plan-and-deploy/deploy-new-installations/install-mailbox-role?view=exchserver-2016

     

    Install account is a member of domain admins, enterprise admins and schema admins.
    setup.exe fails in Hybrid Deployment Check: Deserialization fails

    Found documents stating that setup.exe wizard cannot be used in hybrid environment. The PrepareAD command must be run manually with the /TenantOrganizationConfig switch


    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/plan-and-deploy/prepare-ad-and-domains?view=exchserver-2016

     

    /TenantOrganizationConfig switch requires the Org Tenant XML file

    Found document explaining the use of following command to get Org Tenant XML file:
    Get-OrganizationConfig | Export-clixml -Path C:\temp\Tenant.xml

    Found various documents stating that PrepareAD still fails with /TenantOrganizationConfig switch.

    Following document talks about registry key to bypass Hydrid detection during install:
    https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/05c1e110-67a7-4941-8995-4899dc27543f/exchange-2016-prepare-ad-fails-with-systemaccessviolationexception?forum=Exch2016SD

     

    What is the correct method to proceed?

     

    When is Microsoft going to develop a tool for recipient management that does not require on Onprem exchange server?

  • Steve_Pogue's avatar
    Steve_Pogue
    Brass Contributor

    A member of the Exchange and Outlook Beta team reached out to me help out.  Thank you.

    Finally got exchange 2016 installed in our Hybrid environment.

     

    The prepare Active Directory document (Step 2) has a small statement at the end "Important. If you have a hybrid deployment configured between your on-premises organization and Exchange Online, add the /TenantOrganizationConfig switch to the command." This comment is really important but also needs some further instruction.

     

    Here are the important beginning steps if you already have a Hybrid onprem-online environment:

    1) Export your Tenant Organization config xml file with the following powershell command: 

    Get-OrganizationConfig | Export-clixml -Path C:\temp\Tenant.xml

    2) Prepare AD with this command:

    Setup /PrepareAD /TenantOrganizationconfig:C:\temp\Tenant.xml /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

    3) Reboot

    4) Prepare AD again with this command:

    setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

    5) Reboot

    6) run setup.exe to complete UI install