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Moving an entire Active Directory domain to cloud/VPS

Answered Moving an entire Active Directory domain to cloud/VPS

  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:05 PM
     
     
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    Hello,

        I have been asked about moving an AD domain to a complete VPS/Cloud service.  This would be a couple of DCs and an Exchange server.  It doesn't sound like a good idea to me but is there anyone that is actually doing it?  Is it feasible? How would you even log in every day with the servers offsite?

        Also, is there a good hosting service for this?  I've looked at Amazon, but their pricing and information is very confusing.  I couldn't even find a phone number to call them for questions.  Just a form that I filled out and was never contacted. 

       Sorry for sounding newbish, but I am new cloud computing overall.  I've had many years experience with AD though and prefer having my AD server close by.

    Thanks for any responses.

     

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  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:13 PM
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    AFAIK, you can't place your AD in the cloud for on premise (At least not yet) services.  I believe Windows Azure will allow you to bring up applications in the could and use AD in the cloud to control authentication.

    Don't feel bad this is all ground breaking stuff and there are plenty of folks starting to use it, but it is in a HIGH rate of flux.  
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_azure

    My company uses cloud based services for certain features, mainly testing.  You can ramp up a whole bunch of machines to test for 8 hours and you only have to pay for the 8 hours of usage.  

    Not sure if that helped much but hopefully it is a start.

    -- 
    Paul Bergson
    MVP - Directory Services
    MCITP: Enterprise Administrator
    MCTS, MCT, MCSE, MCSA, Security+, BS CSci
    2008, Vista, 2003, 2000 (Early Achiever), NT4
    http://www.pbbergs.com    Twitter @pbbergs
    http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/paulbergson

    Please no e-mails, any questions should be posted in the NewsGroup. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

     
  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:25 PM
     
     
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    Thanks for the reply Paul.  I thought that would be the case because it really didn't sound right to me.  The only thing that made sense to for the scenario is maybe just moving my Exchange server to a cloud/VPS server.  Either as a new AD domain or as an offsite DC connected to my domain via VPN.  Would one of those work?

    Thanks again.

     
  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:27 PM
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    I believe you can move Exchange to the cloud and you should be able to sync your on premise to the cloud for AD services.

    -- 
    Paul Bergson
    MVP - Directory Services
    MCITP: Enterprise Administrator
    MCTS, MCT, MCSE, MCSA, Security+, BS CSci
    2008, Vista, 2003, 2000 (Early Achiever), NT4
    http://www.pbbergs.com    Twitter @pbbergs
    http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/paulbergson

    Please no e-mails, any questions should be posted in the NewsGroup. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

     
  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:51 PM
     
     
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    Thanks again Paul.  Do you know of a good hosting company other than Amazon?  As I said, I found it difficult to use and couldn't find any good way to contact any sales or support personnel.
     
  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 4:31 PM
     
     
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    You can run AD servers on full instances on Azure or providers such as Rackspace.  In general you would do so to extend your private AD environment however, not replace it.  For smaller organizations this can be an effective DR solution.  Keep in mind there are caveats to running AD in the cloud, both hosted and private, including but not limited to limitations due to virtualization, connectivity, security, backup, etc.
     
  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 4:50 PM
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    There are several, the biggies are Microsoft and Amazon.

    -- 
    Paul Bergson
    MVP - Directory Services
    MCITP: Enterprise Administrator
    MCTS, MCT, MCSE, MCSA, Security+, BS CSci
    2008, Vista, 2003, 2000 (Early Achiever), NT4
    http://www.pbbergs.com    Twitter @pbbergs
    http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/paulbergson

    Please no e-mails, any questions should be posted in the NewsGroup. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

     
  • Wednesday, February 13, 2013 4:51 PM
     
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    Here's how to do it on Azure, by the way: http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2013/01/20/step-by-step-extending-on-premise-active-directory-to-the-cloud-with-windows-azure-31-days-of-servers-in-the-cloud-part-20-of-31.aspx