How to Sync Azure AD with On Premise AD?

Featured image

How to Sync On-premise AD with Windows Azure AD using Azure AD Sync tool

Before syncing the on-premise AD with Azure AD, let’s warm up with the basic concepts involved with this topic. Let’s start with Azure AD; it is a service that provides identity and access management capabilities in the cloud. Azure AD can be integrated with existing on-premise AD for providing single sign-on functionality for their users to access the cloud applications. So it is essential for organizations to keep the identities in both on-premise AD and Azure AD to be in sync. To solve this sync requirement, we have Azure Active Directory Sync tool, which provides one-way synchronization from on-premise AD to Azure AD.

Prerequisites

Test Lab Environment:

Steps

This article includes the following tasks,

  1. Create Azure AD and Activate Azure AD Sync
  2. Download and Install Azure AD Sync tool in on-premise AD
  3. Configure Azure AD Sync tool in on-premise AD
  4. Testing Sync between on-premise AD and Azure AD

  5. Create Azure AD and Activate Azure AD Sync

Windows Azure Active
Directory

Microsoft Azure Active
Directory

NOTE: By default the domain name will additionally include .onmicrosoft.com. Here, I have specified jiji for domain name, so the complete domain name will be jiji.onmicrosoft.com.

Azure Active Directory
Integration

  1. Download and Install Azure AD Sync tool in on-premise AD

azure active
directory

After downloading the Azure AD Sync tool proceed with the installation steps as shown below,

Active Directory Windows
Azure

Active Directory
Azure

Azure Active Directory
Sync

Azure Active Directory Sync
Tool

Wxindoes Azure Active Directory Sync
Services

Azure Active Directory
Integration

  1. Configure Azure AD Sync tool in on-premise AD

After installing the Azure AD Sync tool proceed with the configuration steps as shown below,

Azure Active
Directory

Sync Active
Directory

Azure Active Directory
Sync

Azure Active Directory Hybrid
Deployment

Azure Active Directory
Synchronization

How to configure azure ad
sync

Active Directory Azure Sync
Configuration

Synchronize Active
Directory

  1. Testing Sync between on-premise AD and Azure AD

Now comes the interesting part, as we always feel better to taste (test) than cook (configure). So let’s taste the dish which we have prepared in the previous section.

Active Directory Users and
Computers

NOTE: Checkout this link for list of attributes that are synced by the Windows Azure Active Directory Sync tool.

Azure Active Directory Users
creation

Thus we have synchronized the on-premise AD with Windows Azure AD using Azure AD Sync tool.