Migrate On-Premise Active Directory to Azure
There are a few different ways that you can approach moving your on-prem AD server into the cloud, some more common than others. First, there is the approach of completely coming off of on-premise AD and moving that into Azure AD. This is the less common of the approaches and we see and perform very little of these types of migrations. This way can take a lot more time and effort to get done properly as manage desktop policies and the environment as a whole can look a little bit different in on-prem vs. Azure AD. Typically, we try to steer people in the direction of a hybrid approach ( I will talk about this below) since on-prem AD tends to be a bit more robust than Azure AD in itself. If your company is using on-prem AD and has little services being managed within it, then moving into Azure AD may be the right choice.
The second is a hybrid approach using AD Connect and Azure AD Hybrid. This is the direction that we typically like to point customers in as you can get the best of both worlds and maintain the functionality that you're used to. The benefit of hybrid is that we can join on-prem AD managed devices to Azure AD so you get the benefits of Azure AD and it can be managed from the cloud. Here are some capabilities and benefits of Hybrid Azure AD:
Capabilities:
- Single sign on to both cloud and on-premises
resources
Conditional access through domain join or through Intune/Endpoint Manager if co-managed
Self-service password reset and Windows Hello PIN reset on lock screen
Enterprise State Roaming across devices
Benefits:
- The environment supports down-level devices
running Windows 7 and 8.1
- Able to continue to use Group Policy to
mange device configuration
- Able to continue to use existing imaging
solutions to deploy and configure devices
Able to have Win32 apps deployed to these devices that rely on Active Directory machine authentication
We have gotten different requests when it comes to bringing AD into the cloud and there are different options that can be discussed. We are happy to discuss any and all items with you if you are thinking of moving into the cloud and we have experienced professionals who have done this over and over again, so feel confident in coming to RyanTech for help!
