Exchange hybrid or not when all mailboxes are in EXO? Question about Object management.

Copper Contributor
Hi all,
We have all mailbox in EXO, nothing on-Premise. But we installed one Exchange server 2016 to manage synced Exchange object, with AADConnect.
We didn’t enable Hybrid Exchange because we are not in a hybrid environment.
1/ What will be the difference in Exchange object management with or without Exchange hybridation ? (Mailenable user, remote mailbox, attributes available ...).
I didn’t found any comparison table.
2/ with AADConnect and only EXO mailboxes, what will be the best practice for Sharedmailboxes, resources mailboxes and Distribution lists ? To create these objects directly on EXO or On-Premise ?
Thanks !
3 Replies

Hybrid is not requirement for managing objects/attributes for such scenarios. And whether you should create objects directly in ExO or manage them on-prem is a decision you should make - if you want centralized management, password sync/PTA or AAD Connect SSO go for the latter.

We use AADconnect/PTA/Seamless SSO, but now without Exchange hybrid.
Without Hybrid I saw only 2 difference in a scenario with all mailboxes in the cloud :
- In EAC we can’t create an Office 365 mailbox object. (But a mailenable object is ok for aadconnect)
- in Powershell we can’t use enable-remote mailbox.
Not a big deal i think.
Do you know if there’s other impacts to not activate Exchange hybrid ?

Well there's a lot of additional functionalities that you will not have access to, but as far as managing objects goes, you should be fine.