There are lots of organizations running Exchange 2010 hybrid, but with the upcoming end-of-life of Exchange 2010 it’s time to move on. Sometimes it’s not always possible to move everything to Exchange Online, so then you must migrate from Exchange 2010 hybrid to Exchange 2016 hybrid.

When preparing Active Directory for Exchange 2016 using the /PrepareSchema swith the following error is (sometimes) raised:

A hybrid deployment with Office 365 has been detected. Please ensure that you are running setup with the /TenantOrganizationConfig switch. To use the TenantOrganizationConfig switch you must first connect to your Exchange Online tenant via PowerShell and execute the following command: “Get-OrganizationConfig | Export-Clixml -Path MyTenantOrganizationConfig.XML”. Once the XML file has been generated, run setup with the TenantOrganizationConfig switch as follows “/TenantOrganizationConfig MyTenantOrganizationConfig.XML”.

If you continue to see this this message then it indicates that either the XML file specified is corrupt, or you are attempting to upgrade your on-premises Exchange installation to a build that isn’t compatible with the Exchange version of your Office 365 tenant. Your Office 365 tenant must be upgraded to a compatible version of Exchange before upgrading your on-premises Exchange installation. For more information, see: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=262888

For more information, visit: http://technet.microsoft.com/library(EXCHG.150)/ms.exch.setupreadiness.DidTenantSettingCreatedAnException.aspx

(unfortunately the last link doesn’t show any useful information, and it hasn’t been updated since the early Exchange 2013 days).

Note. I’m not sure when and why this message pops up. Right now, it looks like it only happens in older tenants where Exchange 2010 hybrid is already running for some time. If you have more information about this, please feel free to leave a comment.

As stated in the error message you must run the following command in an Exchange Online PowerShell window:

Get-OrganizationConfig | Export-Clixml -Path C:\Install\MyTenantOrganizationConfig.XML

This retrieves the organization configuration from Exchange Online and exports it to an XML file. When opening the XML you can read the organization configuration as shown in the following screenshot:

There’s a pitfall when continuing, the /TenantOrganzationConfig switch that’s in the message is a switch that can only be combined with the /PrepareAD switch, it cannot be used with the /PrepareSchema switch. If you do, it will raise a “The parameter ‘tenantorganizationconfig’ is not valid for current operation ‘PrepareSchema’” Error message.

So, you must continue with the following command:

Setup.exe /PrepareAD /TenantOrganizationConfig C:\Install\TenantOrganizationConfig.XML /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Note. Running the /PrepareAD switch will automatically trigger the/PrepareSchema switch.

Now you can continue with the /PrepareDomain switch, followed by the installation of your first Exchange 2016 server in the existing Exchange 2010 environment.