Some time ago, Microsoft announced that Exchange 2010 will reach end of support on 14th January 2020. This means Microsoft will no longer provide new features, patches or support for the product, which can leave your organisation with performance or compatibility issues and quite a major security risk. In my five years of consulting, I have seen many more Exchange 2010 organisations than others, so there could be an awful lot still out there requiring an upgrade. An important note to make is that Exchange 2010 organisations cannot be directly upgraded to the newly released Exchange 2019 as Microsoft do not support this upgrade path.
Therefore if Exchange 2010 is in your Exchange organisation, now is the time to plan the upgrade to Exchange 2016. You should look to do the following high-level tasks:
- Perform application and plug-in analysis. You need to ensure they will continue to work with Exchange 2016. If not, upgrade them.
Patch the Exchange 2010 to latest Service Pack and Update Rollup. This can be found on the Microsoft website. - Upgrade Outlook clients to Outlook 2016.
- Plan the Exchange 2016 upgrade carefully. Microsoft provide hardware sizing calculators and a deployment assistant to help you plan the upgrade.
- Deploy Exchange 2016, and if you have a Hybrid configuration, re-run the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard to include the internet-facing Exchange 2016 servers.
- If your organisation uses Unified Messaging, migrate this role to the Exchange 2016 servers.
- Point mail relays at the Exchange 2016 servers.
- Point applications and multi-function devices at the Exchange 2016.
- Point client access at the Exchange 2016 servers.
- If mailboxes reside on Exchange 2010, plan the migrations and migrate them.
- Decommission Exchange 2010.
