It’s a pain in the patootie for IT admins at Microsoft shops to deal with Active Directory logins in the Azure public cloud and in their own public data centers. That’s why Microsoft devised a tool to span both, Azure AD Connect. Released in beta in August, the service is now available for download in public preview.
The service comes with several upgrades following the beta introduction, including support for multiple forests, each of which is an Active Directory database unto itself that can cover many users and computers, Alex Simons, director of program management for Azure Active Directory at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post today.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1625395,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"cloud,dev,enterprise,","session":"B"}']The gradual evolution of a tool spanning both a public cloud and a corporate data center for Active Directory — a key component of IT architectures supporting scores of employees — suggests that Microsoft wants to have everything in place for its customers to use the Azure cloud in a big way.
And simplicity is important here. The integration of Windows Server Active Directory and Azure Active Directory can take just four clicks, Simons wrote.
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Simons and his team are aiming to make Azure AD Connect generally available for all to use within the next three months, he wrote.
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