Server migration is a very stressful task. It involves moving business-critical data between different locations. Since Exchange 2013 is nearly at the end of its road, the number of companies which are looking into migration away from it increases. While there is more than one possible target server to Migrate Exchange 2013 to Office 365 or Exchange 2013 Upgrade to 2019 seems to be one of the most popular scenarios. In this article, I’ll show you what the available methods are to migrate from Exchange 2013 and how to perform them.
Exchange 2013 end of life
The main reason for migrating away from Exchange 2013 is that it will soon reach its end of support. A quick look at the calendar tells us that its prime time is long gone and a few months after its tenth birthday, on April 11, 2023, Microsoft will stop providing technical assistance, as well as bug and security fixes.
What does “end of life” mean?
The technical term for end of life is the end date of extended support. It doesn’t mean that the Exchange Server will suddenly stop working. No, the Extended Support End Date means that the Server is officially labeled as unsupported. In other words:
you shouldn’t expect any new updates,
getting technical assistance might be a challenge,
you enter the high-risk area,
since most organizations run away from Exchange 2013, it will be harder to get help even from technical communities and forums,
for the same reason, slowly but surely, most vendors will stop supporting Exchange 2013. It means that your IT toolbox will become limited.
Truth be told, on some rare occasions, there were security updates to Exchange Servers which lifecycle has ended. And there still are some companies who successfully operate on Exchange 2010, which officially “died” almost 2 years ago. This brings us to a popular question.
Do I have to migrate from Exchange 2013?
It depends. If you want to comply with a security-by-design model, value your risk assessment specialists and in general prefer to live with ease of mind – it’s better to migrate, and to do it sooner than later.
I’ve seen many opinions like this:
“What’s wrong with an old Exchange server? It’s only email!”
This might be the right time to comment on that. “Only email” is what most companies depend on. Not only in terms of communication, but also record management, notifications about crucial processes and brand management. If something bad happens to email, companies can lose deals and their prospects’ trust. Organizations are under phishing and other attacks every single day. Keeping an old IT infrastructure increases the number of attack vectors.
Available migration options
There are different destinations you might be interested in migrating to:
Newer on-premises servers
Most organizations that haven’t migrated to the cloud yet, have one of these two main reasons: they either require full control over the company’s data or prefer the on-prem one-time-purchase licensing model (and don’t like the cloud licensing model based on a monthly or yearly subscription). If that is the case, current migration options are Exchange 2016 or Exchange 2019. Not ideal options, since Exchange 2016 reached the end of its Mainstream Support and both Exchange 2019 and 2016 have the Extended Support End Date set to October 14, 2025.
To know more about Exchange 2013 End of Support visit O365CloudExperts.