Support Azure AD domain join for Windows Server 2016
Microsoft should strongly consider implementing support for Azure AD join in future builds of Windows Server 2016. I how a couple of customers that have nearly finished the transition to all cloud and is left with a couple of servers due to legacy software. They are currently left with the option to deploy Azure AD Domain Services for supporting a couple (2-5) servers.
Peter Selch Dahl
shared this idea
Thanks for the feedback. We’re reviewing feasibility for this feature. No timelines yet, but this is on our roadmap.
Please share any additional feedback on this suggestion for us to review
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Ravi
17 comments
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Anonymous
commented
+1!!
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Christopher Neufeld
commented
In an increasingly cloud-centric environment, this is a must-have. We run a slew of servers across various cloud services and it would be extremely beneficial to be able to centralize and manage logins using Azure AD.
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Neil G.
commented
In case its not clear - this is a request for windows server to be able to register as a known device to Azure AD -- NOT Hybrid join -- with the short term goal of being able to login with our Office 365/AzureAD identities as well as local "break the glass" login.
Probably long term goal would be MDM server management through Intune but that is a whole different request.
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Larry Gonzalez
commented
Is there any update about this feature?
The "Under Review" is from March 1, 2018 -
HenrikE
commented
This is needed. The comment below shows that Microsoft don't even understand the question. We want to be able to join server OS directly to AAD, just as we do clients. While this may mean that the server OS will need to be able to consume an OAUTH token, it is most desirable to be able to remove the onprem AD altogether while keeping the option to deploy the occational member server.
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Jeff
commented
Any Update ?? For Support on 2019.
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Gerald Talton
commented
Hey Ravi, this "Under Review" comment is almost a year old, can you give us any insight on where this is on the roadmap?
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Gerald Talton
commented
Without this feature, my attempts to integrate with my employer's current Azure AD. Currently I am being told that installing Azure AD DS is not an acceptable security risk and that this is the only way they would consider supporting AD access.
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Josh Aitken
commented
We are rapidly migrating traditionally on-prem SMB's into the cloud and one of the primary issues we run into is the inability to shift clients on-prem LOB's into Azure VMs without also dragging the unwanted, typically poorly maintained onprem AD's along with them.
AzureAD connect/ ADFS does not fulfill this request, the benefit of the cloud is we can reduce cost/ complexity and general administrative overhead - the aforementioned technologies do the opposite (at least with respects to SMB's).
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Tom Hebert
commented
@BenTheBuilder is spot on. For large organizations, maintaining AD is fine. But for many others, it's overkill. Imagine the scenario where you are supporting a small business having two servers. In order to use AD, you need to maintain an AD server and best practice says two. AD domains are fragile and must be carefully operated or you will be finding yourself researching and fixing very complex issues.
This hypothetical business really wants single sign on, two-factor authorization, and some basic things. Their one and only admin has full control anyway. Pushing complex group policies is just an unnecessary complication. Most other things associated with AD are an unnecessary costly distraction.
Finally, a simplified on-premise environment is much easier to move to Azure. When I do this, the first thing I do is provision a replicate domain server in Azure, mainly to ensure that authentication can occur should the site-to-site VPN go down.
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BenTheBuilder
commented
This would be a huge deal. We are a Cloud first shop. We don't want to run AD Controllers - we would rather utilize Azure AD and the Groups/Users in it. We don't care about things like GPO (we have real config mgmt). We just need a single IAM solution for our Cloud Services and IaaS resources.
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turnin
commented
Does "Windows Server Essentials Experience" fill this gap ?
i.e Local Windows machines joined to locally running "Essentials Experience" Server, which is connected to Azure AD -
Carsten Schuette commented
Will this feature be available with Windows Server 2019?
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Michiel
commented
This would be a huge added value for multi tenant shared workloads. Would take all the hassle away from forest/trust based user separation
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Peter
commented
In my case, we would like to use Azure AD combined with O365 but keep the ability for example to roll out a physical server on premise. This 2016 server would then be joined to Azure AD.
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Dan - the capability you are referring to is already available. We call it Hybrid AAD Join. You'll need to deploy AAD Connect and enable sync between your AD and AAD to get to that state. Please refer to our documentation on Hybrid AAD Join for that
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Dan Bolton
commented
I would like this functionality to support Windows 2016 servers that are also joined to on-prem AD but also AzureAD so users get a more seamless experience with services that use Azure AD (e.g. box, etc.)