Azure Active Directory - Directory Synchronization In Microsoft Azure

Introduction

This article is about the Azure Active Directory synchronization and installation of Azure AD Connect in your server machine.

Requirements

  1. An Azure account.
  2. Windows Server Machine.

Links

Get in touch with the below articles before you step forward towards this.

  1. Basics of Azure Active Directory
  2. Azure AD – Insights and creating a new instance

Azure Active Directory Synchronization

We will be synchronizing users and groups from on-premises Active Directory to Azure Active Directory. The tool which we will be using for this action is Azure AD Connect.

Support Options from Azure AD Connect

  1. Synchronize multiple active directories to a single Azure AD.
  2. Password write-back – you can create user accounts and password for the group in the cloud and store the same instance in your onpremise.
  3. Self Service Password reset in the Cloud – This helps us to reset the password in the cloud and replicate it same in the onpremise instance.

Working on Azure AD Connect

Install and Configure Azure AD Connect

Perform Directory Synchronization


Step 1

Log in to your Azure account and move to the AD which you have created.



Step 2

Scroll down in the Azure Active Directory window and click on Download Azure AD Connect – “Integrate with your local directory”



You will be navigated to a page where you can download Azure AD Connect. Scroll down and click on Download.



Install this tool once after it is downloaded.

Note

Make sure you have a Windows Sever Operating System installed on your Laptop/Machine as the Azure AD Connect can work only on Server Machines as such.



You will be getting a window for installation as shown below for Azure AD Connect installation:



Check on the license agreement and install Azure AD Connect on your machine.

Sign in with your Azure AD Credentials on the Connect to Azure AD window during installation:



When you give your credentials for an Azure AD user, you will get an error as shown below.


This is because you don’t have the global admin privileges for this account, so let’s create a new account now.

Move for your AD page and click on Users - Add User.



Specify the type of User and the User name, click on next.



Name the first name and last name for your account, Display Name, Role of the account - mention it as a Global Account, move to next.



Here we have to create a temporary password, click on create and create a temporary password here. Copy the password to your clipboard which you should have for future purposes.



So, now we can find two of our accounts added in the Azure portal.



Move back to the Azure AD installation, provide the global account credentials. You will be again getting an error as shown below:



This error below is because we should reset the password for the global account that we have created now.


Sign out from your Azure account now and sign in with the new account which we just created.



Click on Sign in at the Azure portal page and sign in with your credentials, enter the old temporary password and reset with a new password of your choice.



Of course this account doesn’t have any Azure subscription so sign out from this account and again log in with your master account in which we earlier created the active directory.

Note

We can also work with a private window for resetting this password on your browser.



Enter the new login credentials at your Azure AD installation page now.



This will help you to complete the installation. Now you can go for the server manager of your Machine, create an on-premise account and add a new user.



The user whom you have added can be seen in Azure AD at the cloud which has synchronized with your onpremise instance.

Keynotes in Short

  1. About Azure AD Synchronization.
  2. Supporting features of Azure AD Connect.
  3. Installation of Azure AD Connect.
  4. Creating a Global user in Azure AD.
  5. Resetting the password for global Active Directory user account.
  6. Creating a group in a local server machine.


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