[Samba] Samba 4 with Microsoft Exchange

[LORANG Geert]

On 10/12/2018 11:48, Gaetan SLONGO via samba wrote:
> We would like to know if recent developments and improvements allow to use a Microsoft Exchange infrastructure with Samba 4 as an Active Directory Controller ?
>
>
> Any informations about it ?
>

I've done some tests / research few months back on this but we've 
abandoned this path as it's definitely not production ready.

Some notes I can share from testing Exchange 2013 / 2016 against Samba 
4.6.5:

- You need some ldbedit hacking to get past the OS check Exchange setup 
performs in the beginning (e.g. operatingSystem: Samba -> Windows, 
operatingSystemVersion -> 6.1 (7601)))
- Any CU update from 2013 or Exchange 2016 does not work because the 
schema extensions for possSuperiors/authOrig attributes do not cooperate 
well with Samba
- RC1 of Exchange 2013 against Samba 4.6.5 can actually do all schema 
extension successfully but then we got stuck at the Mailbox Role 
Installation / EAC not fully functional.

After that we gave up.

On the other hand, I can tell you that Azure AD Connect works really 
well with Samba against Office 365.
In this scenario you just sync your (Samba) AD users to a new AD setup 
by Microsoft in Azure and you can run Exchange / Office 365 against the 
the ADDC in the cloud.

Via 
https://products.office.com/en/business/office-365-enterprise-e3-business-software 
you can setup a free trial for 30 days. I believe you can extend it to 
90 days via the portal afterwards.

Hope this helps;

Cheers,
Geert