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You're reading from  Learn Microsoft Azure

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2018
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781789617580
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Mohamed Waly
Mohamed Waly
author image
Mohamed Waly

Mohamed Waly has shown an interest in IT since he was a student. The journey began in 2011 when he joined the college of Computer Science, when he started learning how to work with Windows Server 2008, and was the youngest amongst his colleagues at the college to achieve certification. In 2012 he joined one of the greatest and most well-known student programs all over the world, the Microsoft Student Partner program. During the time he spent on the program, he took many communication and presentation skills sessions that helped him to deliver too many sessions since his second year at the college and the journey continues till now. In the meantime, Waly learned some other topics such as Exchange Server System Center, VMware vSphere, and Microsoft Azure, formerly known as Windows Azure. He has worked in multiple communities, such as the Azure Community in Egypt, and the Open Source on Azure. Also, he served multiple internships during his time in the university to improve his experience. That's why, in July 2014, Microsoft recognized Mohamed Waly as the youngest MVP in the world. After finishing college, he worked for two of the biggest Microsoft Partners in Egypt—Global Knowledge and Blue Cloud Technologies—as a System Engineer and an Associate Infrastructure Consultant, respectively, serving Microsoft Customers in the EMEA region by designing and implementing virtualization and Cloud solutions.
Read more about Mohamed Waly

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Understanding Azure Active Directory

In this chapter, you will be introduced to the most well known identity management solution, Active Directory, but as a service provided on Azure. You will understand the difference between Azure AD and on-premises AD, its benefits, and the difference between its different flavors. Then, you will get your hands dirty by learning how to work with Azure AD users and groups. Finally, you will learn some of the most commonly used aspects of Azure AD, such as self-service password reset, users sign-in activities, multi-factor authentication, and adding custom domain names.

The following topics will be covered:

  • Introduction to Azure AD
  • Working with users in Azure AD
  • Working with groups in Azure AD
  • Azure AD common tasks

Introduction to Azure AD

Identity has always played a vital role in IT environments in the last 20 years. With the new era of cloud, identity continues to play a central role.

For a long time, on-premises AD was the most used identity management application and Microsoft is working on extending it to the cloud; that is why Azure AD was offered.

Back in 2012, Microsoft announced Azure AD with some humble features. Since then, many features have been added to Azure AD to make it more mature.

Azure AD is a fully managed multi-tenant service by Microsoft that offers access and an identity management service.

However, Azure AD is not a total replacement for Windows Server Active Directory. For instance, you cannot assign group policies to users and computers, and objects, such as faxes and printers, using Azure AD. On the other hand, Azure AD can be considered a centralized location...

Working with users in Azure AD

In this section, you will learn how to do some elementary tasks with Azure AD users.

Creating an Azure AD user

In order to create an Azure AD user, you need to perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the Azure portal, go to All services, and search Azure Active Directory:
  1. When you click on it, a new blade will be opened where you can have an overview about the current Azure AD tenant that was created when you first created your subscription on Azure:
  1. Navigate to Users, which is located under Manager, and a new blade will be opened displaying the current Azure AD users you have:
  1. Click on New user, and a new blade will be opened where you have to fill in the following fields:
    • Name:...

Working with groups in Azure AD

For a better organization for your environment, you should use Azure AD groups. In this section, you will learn how to work with Azure AD groups.

Creating an Azure AD group

To create and Azure AD group, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Azure Active Directory | Groups.
  2. A new blade will be opened. Click on New group, as shown in the following screenshot:
  1. A new blade will open, where you have to specify the following:
    • Group type: Like the group types in Windows Server Active Directories, there's two types of group for Azure AD:
      • Security: This acts the same as the on-premises security group. It's used for security purposes, where you can add users or computers to the group...

Azure AD common tasks

In this section, we will go through the configuration of the common tasks of Azure AD.

Self-service password reset

Self-service password reset is one of the coolest features that saves a great deal of time for the IT admins by allowing the users themselves to reset their own passwords.

In order to configure this feature, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Azure Active Directory | Users | Password reset.
  2. A new blade will be opened displaying the current properties of the self-service password. It displays three statuses for the password reset:
    • None: This is the disabled state of the self-service password reset.
    • Selected: This specifies the groups you want to enable this feature for.
    • All: This enables...

Summary

So far, you have been introduced to Azure AD and how to get started with it. Azure AD is much more than what has been covered so far, yet it is a good start to working with Azure AD and, from here, you can continue to dig deeper and learn more about Azure AD.

Questions

  1. Which of the following is not an Azure AD advantage:
    • SSO
    • Application proxy
    • Hybrid solution
    • Support for domain join for different OSes
  2. When you delete an Azure AD user, he/she will be deleted permanently after __
    • 30 days
    • 42 days
    • 21 days
  3. Custom domain names can be added to Azure AD even if you do not really own them. However, they will not be verified until you add the text record in your domain registrar.
    • True
    • False
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Author (1)

author image
Mohamed Waly

Mohamed Waly has shown an interest in IT since he was a student. The journey began in 2011 when he joined the college of Computer Science, when he started learning how to work with Windows Server 2008, and was the youngest amongst his colleagues at the college to achieve certification. In 2012 he joined one of the greatest and most well-known student programs all over the world, the Microsoft Student Partner program. During the time he spent on the program, he took many communication and presentation skills sessions that helped him to deliver too many sessions since his second year at the college and the journey continues till now. In the meantime, Waly learned some other topics such as Exchange Server System Center, VMware vSphere, and Microsoft Azure, formerly known as Windows Azure. He has worked in multiple communities, such as the Azure Community in Egypt, and the Open Source on Azure. Also, he served multiple internships during his time in the university to improve his experience. That's why, in July 2014, Microsoft recognized Mohamed Waly as the youngest MVP in the world. After finishing college, he worked for two of the biggest Microsoft Partners in Egypt—Global Knowledge and Blue Cloud Technologies—as a System Engineer and an Associate Infrastructure Consultant, respectively, serving Microsoft Customers in the EMEA region by designing and implementing virtualization and Cloud solutions.
Read more about Mohamed Waly