In the world of hybrid headaches, directory synchronization is the root of all evil. While there's nothing wrong with using directory synchronization (I'm a big fan), most of the issues and questions I encounter when dealing with hybrid issues are a direct result of not understanding directory synchronization and how the process works.
There are several benefits to hybrid identity and directory synchronization, including:
Compromised Domain Controllers are every Active Directory admin’s nightmare. However, Domain Controllers now have nightmares of their own … all through their Print Spooler services.
When you are planning any major IT transformation, we recommend that you do what the great craftsmen do: Measure twice. Cut once. That’s because we have seen it happen time and again. You spend all this effort creating a pristine plan and understanding the cool new features of the cloud platform you are migrating to. You market those features to your end users, to help show them how it will be a change for the better. And then the moment you start migrating, you run into issues. Now you have to stop the project and remediate these problems before you can keep going.
One of the pieces of feedback we received from a previous ENow post (integrating your temporary COVID tenant with your on-premises environment), was the fear of introducing errors and interrupting processes that now rely on the Azure AD tenant. This, indeed, may be the case when you rely solely on Azure AD Connect’s soft matching capabilities and wield a narrow scope for synchronization of objects.
Getting ready for 'Day One' of a merger or acquisition is a unique challenge. There’s often a lot of complexity to think through—and not a lot of time to do it. So the top IT priority for Day One should be to set systems up so the organizations can start working together. In this post, we focus on setting up a unified directory.
Are you currently on AAD Connect 1.6.2.0? If so, you need to act now!
In the first quarters of 2020, when organizations were confronted with the demand to work any place, any device, all the time, some had to scramble to make things work. One of the common approaches we found was creating a “COVID Microsoft 365 tenant” and provisioning other temporary solutions.
The rising need for flexibility and ease of integration with other systems, either on-premises or in the cloud, are driving organizations to adopt a simpler directory structure. Ideally, Active Directory architecture, design, management and operations should seamlessly be monitored and adjusted to keep up with the changes occurring in the larger enterprise. More often than not, however, instead of having in place an Active Directory monitoring strategy there only are periodic reviews that happens usually in response to certain events — some of business nature, some related to changes in technology or products, and some security related.
Welcome to part 3 of "Addressing the Office 365 Monitoring Gaps". In part 1, we discussed the differences in monitoring cloud-based systems vs traditional on-premises deployments. In part 2, we discussed admins least favorite thing, outages.
