Integrate On-Premises Active Directory Domains With Azure Active Directory

If I ask you, do you know about any multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service? Your answer would be ‘NO’; there is no need to worry, as we will provide you with the answer. In this post, we will talk about the Azure active directory, and how to integrate on-premises active directory domains into the Azure active directory.

What is Azure Active Directory?

Azure AD is a cloud-based directory and identity management service developed by Microsoft. For an organization, the Azure AD helps an organization’s employees SignUp to multiple services and access them anywhere over the cloud with a single set of login credentials.

Not only this, Azure helps them access internal resources on their organization’s intranet network. Azure AD is behind the Office 365 system. Also, it syncs with the on-premise active directory and provides authentication to other cloud-based systems.

Who can use Azure AD?

• IT Admins

IT admins can use it to control access to their apps and app resources. They can use Azure AD to automate user provisioning between their existing Windows Server AD and cloud apps. Also, Azure AD provides tools to protect user identities and credentials.

• App Developers

App developers can use Azure AD to add single sign-on (SSO) to their apps to allow an app to work with the user’s pre-existing credentials.

• Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics CRM Online Subscribers

If you are using any Microsoft service, such as Microsoft 365 or Office 365, it means you are already using Azure AD. As a result, you can manage access to your integrated cloud apps as an Azure AD user.

Let’s discuss how to integrate the on-premises active directory domains with Azure Active Directory.

Some organizations make use of Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) to authenticate the identities of users, applications, and other resources in a security network. Usually, directory and identity services are typically hosted on-premises. Still, some organizations’ applications are hosted partly on-premises and partly in Azure which delays authentication requests from Azure back to on-premises.

However, you can reduce the delay by implementing directory and identity services in Azure. When it is about implementing directory and identity services in Azure, there are two ways to do that:

• The first is to use Azure AD to create an active directory domain in the cloud and connect the same to your active directory domain. You can use Azure AD Connect’s help to integrate your on-premises directories with Azure AD.
• The second is by extending your existing on-premises active directory infrastructure to Azure by placing a VM in Azure that runs AD DS as a domain controller.

Let’s talk about the first way to integrate on-premises active directory domains with Azure AD.

To start with, use Azure AD to create a domain in Azure and link it to an on-premises AD domain. However, do remember that Azure AD is not an extension of an on-premises directory; rather, it is a copy containing the same objects and identities. So, if you make any changes to the items on-premises, the same are copied to Azure AD; however, the changes made to Azure AD will not be copied to the on-premises domain.

Benefits of Integrating On-Premises Active Directory Domains to Azure AD

• There will be no need to maintain an AD infrastructure in the cloud
• Users don’t have to contact the on-premises domains as there is authentication in Azure
• The users can use Azure Multi-Factor Authentication security for their sign-ins
• There will be the same identity information in both Azure AD and on-premises active directory domains

Conclusion:

The given post talks about Azure AD and how to integrate on-premises active directory domains to Azure AD. It will prove helpful to you in integrating on-premises active directory domains to Azure AD. Connect with us to get expert assistance.