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hi,

am setting up a new AD for a small office with 50 users, currently the emails are hosted with one of the online hosting services and am going to move the mail to office 365 service.

i will be creating users on the AD with the same names and email addresses created on office 365, and i need to sync both services (on premises AD and cloud-based office 365)

i have read some articles about the Dirsync and how to configure to do the job. my questions are:

1- can i install the Dirsync service on the same AD server (considering this is a small environment)

2- is there any extra charges for using Dirsync in this scenario (other than the charges i pay for office 365 email accounts)

3- where the management operations will happen (on AD local console or on office 365 online admin center)

i have managed local AD with exchange servers before but this my first time with this kind of installation so i will appreciate any advice on how to accomplish this without any issues.

thanks in advance

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This will help you

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DirSync is no more the replacement is Azure AD Connect

Same concept but syncs almost in real time

No charge for it

You make changes in local AD and they get replicated to Azure AD instance

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  1. Technically, yes (I believe), but I think it is highly recommended that dirsync be one its own server.

  2. No. I don’t think so.

  3. Management will happen in 1 of 3 areas. You will manage your AD in the usual spot, ADUC. You can manage your O365 from either the Azure Active Directory powershell module or via the Office Admin Portal (if you need a GUI). I do 99% of my management through powershell for O365. It really is the better way to do things if you are going to do the same thing more than 3 three times, such as assigning country codes or licenses.

EDIT: @tobywells makes some points that I neglected to. A lot of the management between Azure Active Directory and your local AD will sync, and if AAD is configured properly, a lot of those changes will write back to your local side.

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JJoyner pretty much sums up your answer. But I’ve been running DirSync all the way to the current AADConnect on a DC with no problems whatsoever.

Not even sure why it’s not recommended, other than the “sanctity” of a DC; seems like a really light-weight application to me.

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That’s what I’m putting my money on. Plus, with virtualization and the relatively low cost of storage, spinning up a dedicated dirsync server is no big deal. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if that becomes one of the options for a nano server in the future.

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synchronized identity is the best one

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If you are using Hyper-V and server 2012 or 2016 you get to create 2 VM’s on the host. I highly recommend using one VM for AD and one for the AD Azure Connect utility.

-Eric

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An entire f’n server just for AADSync No problems here with 70 users on a “utility server” (not a DC)

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We have a virtualized file server and a virtualized dc server - we put DirSync on the file server…