It’s been a busy month for Exchange projects. I recently posted about the removal of Exchange 2007 from the AD when the Global Catalog cannot find it. And we have been speaking to clients about the deprecation of Basic Authentication in Exchange Online.
Health Checks
My latest project for Exchange Online was a health check, prior to risual taking on a managed service contract for them. As part of any health checks, I tend to use PowerShell (and specifically the Exchange Online module) to export the information to either XML or CSV files. You might ask why not use the GUI exports, but they tend to miss some data. In fact, the last export I did using the GUI only had 28% of the mailboxes.
If you’re used to using the Exchange Management Shell, you will know who to use the cmdlets. To use the Exchange Online module, you use “Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement” to install it. The list below shows the iterations of the module and how they came to be.
Exchange Online Management versions
- Version 1 of ExchangeOnlineManagement was the original version that used remote access to Exchange Online.
- Version 2 of ExchangeOnlineManagement was the next version, which brought in MFA and Modern Authentication.
- Version 3 of ExchangeOnlineManagement has just been released to General Availability, and it allows remote access to Exchange Online without Basic Auth.
So why is this important?
Many businesses will disable the Basic Auth function within WinRM, as it is considered a security risk. When I tried to access the Exchange Online service by using “Connect-ExchangeOnline” from my risual tablet; it would refuse to connect nor download the Exchange cmdlets. Instead. I had to use a risual Jumpbox to connect and export the files.
I recently met with the client about the health check findings, and we realised that some exports were inaccurate. So I fired up a Terminal session and connected to Exchange Online. The updated version 3 of the module connected without problem, and the Exchange cmdlets downloaded just fine.
