Windows Azure Active Directory Cartoon
- Posted: Jan 03, 2013 at 11:35 AM
- 14,976 Views
- 13 Comments
Windows Azure Active Directory is described in cartoon format in this video. It's an easy to follow sketch of all the major pieces and how you can use it. It also describes the differences between Windows Azure Active Directory and Windows Server Active Directory.
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It's been great to watch this video .....and explanation of ad in azure...
Thanks - that's very kind.
This is great and explains a lot. Couple of questions though.
1) We use Office 365. Does that means I could develop web applications (either cloud based running on Windows Azure or traditional ASP.NET apps running on a hosting provider such as GoDaddy) that could authenticate users using their Office 365 credentials?
2) You mentioned something about one having access to Azure AD services if one is using Office 365. Does that mean I don't have to pay for that and it is all included in the Office 365 subscription? I don't think I have seen any option for managing Azure AD on the Office 365 admin screens; perhaps I am missing something?
1. Yes, that's exactly what you can do.
2. It was recently announced that WAAD is free. Office 365 licenses, which you apply to WAAD users still have to be paid for, but the users you create in WAAD are free. To manage the users in Office 365 (remember the users are now in WAAD) go to activedirectory.windowsazure.com and log in using your Office 365 administrator account.
Remember the difference between free users in the directory and Office 365 licenses that you have to pay for. A license is then "attached" to one of the free users in the directory. The users are free, the Office 365 services provided to any users are not free.
You can have some users in your WAAD that have O365 licneses applied and some users that don't have them applied.
Hope that explains.
Planky
Great Video! Thanks for the overview and info on WAAD.. Very informative.
Thanks Liam.
Just wanted to let you know I've forwarded this video to over a dozen customers it is a very useful educational tool for me. Thanks for creating it.
Wait. This is great. Yet my management tells me that IT Pros "hate" video, and in specific, cartoons.
What's the deal?
Thanks Dave - I really appreciate your enthusiasm.
Tony - Ha ha! I guess that's the "richness of humanity"
Great video!
One question - At about 9 minutes in you say the password is managed and checked by your on-premise AD. So, if I point my application to WAAD to authenticate, WAAD is then asking my on-premise AD to authenticate the password?
I'm looking to switch all of our applications (some cloud hosted) to WAAD to assure access even when our on-premise network (and thus AD) is down/unavailable. If I understood correctly, WAAD still wouldn't be a solution to that problem. Is that correct?
Hi BraveStarr,
Yes - that's exactly right. In federated environments, the authentication itself is performed by the "identity provider" (IP). It the creates a token which is signed and forwarded to the consumer who trusts it. It means the app and WAAD don't do the password management. That is done by the folks who know it best - the IT admins INSIDE your organisation. If somebody forgets their password, they get it changed in AD. If somebody leaves the org, when you disable their account in AD, they are automatically locked out of not only the AD-integrated environments, but also the environments that are federated with the local AD - such as WAAD based apps.
There's a video which describes the process (using the "old" Ofice 365 directory and apps - exactly the same principles though) here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/plankytronixx/archive/2011/01/25/whiteboard-video-how-adfs-and-the-microsoft-federation-gateway-work-together-up-in-the-office-365-cloud.aspx
One of the best descriptions of WAAD and Windows Azure Active Directory that I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot. Great Job!
How do we:
A.) - Link the Windows Azure Tenant that sits behind our Office365 environment (xxxx.onmicrosoft.com) with our Window's Azure Account (Owner Live ID/MS Account) so that we see and can manage it through our Azure Portal with our other subscriptions and co-administrators?
I can log into both environments separately at:
but can only see our AD Tenant in the AD Preview Portal.
B.) - Delete a Windows AD tenant that has been created in the Azure management Portal? I created a test one to see what the process was with every expectation that I could delete it subsequently (no information in any documentation or set-up wizard to the contrary)?
Further to B) above it would also appear that you can only create a single AD tenant per Azure Account, as the option to create an AD directory no longer exists. Is this correct? If so it would be helpful to have some clarity of this in the documentation. I had assumed that I could create multiple Azure AD directory environments, which appears not to be the case.
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