I’ve recently started migrating our users over to Microsoft’s BPOS offering. After moving our initial set of users over, we noticed that Outlook was moving at a snails pace when reading emails. It was to a point that Outlook would just lock up and become non-responsive.
We tested a user that was on a different gateway, and we noticed that the speeds were noticeably faster. The only difference between the two gateways is that one had a Barracuda Networks web filter appliance.
After speaking to a Barracuda support rep, we came to the conclusion that we needed to add exemptions for the IPs used by Microsoft. I called Microsoft Online Services support, and got the IPs used for BPOS.
However, after adding these exemptions in, we still noticed that the speeds were unbearable. There were moments that it seemed to work quick but it was short-lived. After searching the firewalls logs to see what exactly was being accessed, I found 3 more subnets that Outlook was connecting too. Once I added those subnets into the exemption list, everything started to run much quicker.
Here are the subnets that are supplied by Microsoft Online Services support for North America:
Primary: 65.55.171.0/24
Secondary: 65.55.63.0/24
These are the additional subnets that I added in:
65.55.236.0/24
65.55.97.0/24
65.55.50.0/24
I’m planning on writing about my experience with Microsoft BPOS once I complete the migration. I’m hoping to be able to complete it within the next two weeks.
Have any of you completed a migration to BPOS? How was your experience?
