Azure AD Tenant = Organizational Account? - azure

I reading through various articles on how a headless app can authenticate with Azure. I'm a little confused with the terminologies. In this sample code, it says it needs an Azure AD Tenant account.
My understanding is an Azure account can be a Microsoft account or an Organizational account. Is Azure AD Tenant either of the two or is it just an Organizational account? Can someone show me where this is clarified in the documentation?

From the definition here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj573650.aspx (See section What is an Azure Tenant):
With the identity platform provided by Microsoft Azure, a tenant is
simply a dedicated instance of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) that
your organization receives and owns when it signs up for a Microsoft
cloud service such as Azure or Office 365.
An Azure AD will have one or more users. These users could be native to that Azure AD, sourced from other Azure ADs (or even local AD) or could be Microsoft Accounts. AFAIK, as of today if a user account is not a Microsoft Account that means it is an organization account.

An Azure tenant can be either of the two... and organizational account (often based on Office 365) or one based off a Microsoft Account (which is really just a user in a directory you don't control).
I'm a big fan of the "start from scratch" method - where you create tenant not tied to Office 365 - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-howto-tenant/

Related

How can I link a Microsoft 365 Developer Sandbox to an Azure Student account so that they share a tenancy?

I'm trying to follow this tutorial on developing with Microsofts Graph Data Connect. The tutorial states:
The Azure subscription must be in the same tenant as the Microsoft 365 tenant. Microsoft Graph Data Connect will only export data to an Azure subscription in the same tenant, not across tenants.
Your Microsoft 365 and Azure tenants must be in the same Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenancy.
I already have an Azure account with an Azure for Students subscription. I signed up to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program and created a new sandbox. This creates a totally new tenant with a corresponding admin#[MYTENANT].onmicrosoft.com account.
The 365 sandbox has an Azure Directory, but no subscription or ability to create new services. The admin account cannot be used to sign up for a new free subscription, attempting to create an Azure free account results in a "Your current account type is not supported" message.
Is there a way to link these two accounts together so I can create an app in Azure that uses Graph Data Connect to access the dummy data in the 365 Sandbox?
You might be able to change your azure subscription to a new directory. (It might be blocked by policy however)
You'll need a user who exists in both directories, and who is an owner on the subscription. In the portal, click the "Change Directory" button on the ribbon and follow the prompts. Note, the directory change will delete all RBAC role assignments and possible some other configurations, but if this is a learning subscription there's probably not a lot that can't be recreated.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devtest/offer/how-to-change-directory-tenants-visual-studio-azure

Azure AD Account vs Active Directory vs Tenant

I am failing to understand the difference and use of Azure Active Directory and Tenant. Subscriptions are services running under a tenant. But I can't understand the relationship between multi-tenant subscriptions or how directories are related to tenants Please help.
A tenant is a dedicated instance of an Azure AD directory that your organization receives when it signs up for a Microsoft cloud service such as Azure or Office 365. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/active-directory-whatis
Each Azure tenant has a dedicated and trusted Azure AD directory. The Azure AD directory includes the tenant's users, groups, and apps and is used to perform identity and access management functions for tenant resources.

What do you mean by Microsoft Account, Tenant, Subscription?

I started learning Microsoft Azure but I'm stuck
Can anyone tell me what is the difference between Microsoft account vs tenant vs Subscription in detail?
When you say "Microsoft account", this usually refers to personal Microsoft accounts (outlook.com/live.com/hotmail.com).
But it could also refer to organizational Azure Active Directory accounts.
They are both kinds of user accounts, both types can exist as members in an Azure Active Directory "tenant".
This tenant is basically an instance of Azure AD for your users, in your control.
When you log in to Azure, you are logging in to Azure AD.
An Azure subscription is where you deploy your services, create resources like databases etc.
A subscription is always linked to an Azure AD tenant.
The users in this linked tenant can be given roles in the subscription to access/modify resources.
If anyone wants access to the subscription, they need to be added to the Azure AD tenant first.
This can be done by creating them an account there, or by inviting them by their email as a "guest".
microsoft account: the one used to log in
tenant: your azure active directory (usually the default is [account].onmicrosoft.com
subscription: your microsoft azure subscription, the one used to create services/ deploy your applications

Can you use an Azure AD identity to log into the Azure Portal?

I've created some Microsoft Live accounts for managing my Azure subscriptions (I've got five).  I can log in using, for example, joe#mycompany.com and manage my web services using the public portal. I think I've got the hang of Azure Active Directory and the Domain Services that go along with it. So now I'm wondering, can I associate my domain ('mycompany.com') with an Azure Active Directory in my corporate portal, add my user 'joe' to it, and use 'joe#mycompany.com' to sign into the portal?  That is, will the Azure Portals use Azure Active Directory for logins?
The Azure Portal allows users to sign in with both Azure AD Accounts AND Microsoft accounts (aka MSAs, LiveIDs, #outlook.com).
If you associate your domain with an Azure AD tenant, you'll be able to log in to the Azure portal with your Azure AD account.
It is important to note that if you have a joe#mycompany.com Microsoft account and a joe#mycompany.com Azure AD account (which you get by adding the mycompany.com domain to an Azure AD tenant and then creating joe#mycompany.com that tenant), you effectively have tow DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS. When you type in joe#mycompany.com, you'll see a prompt like this one:
You'll have to make sure you pick the right one since your existing Azure subscriptions will be associated with your MSA and any new ones you create with your Azure AD account will, by default, not be accessible to your MSA.
Your best bet is to setup an Azure AD tenant, migrate your Azure subscriptions from your MSA to your Azure AD tenant by transfering ownership of the subscription and ensure all new subscriptions are created with Azure AD accounts (and not MSAs). At that point, you can always pick Organizational account and not have to worry about which which Azure subscription is linked to which account.
Other relevant info:
Comprehensive explanation of MSAs, Azure AD and Azure Subscriptions
Creating an Azure subscription using an Azure AD tenant

Can O365 and Azure AD use the same domain

Assume there exists and O365 instance where user identities are managed in the cloud - see the Cloud Identity section here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Understanding-Office-365-identity-and-Azure-Active-Directory-06a189e7-5ec6-4af2-94bf-a22ea225a7a9
Assume there also exists a separate Azure subscription that maintains it's own Active Directory, as well as an assortment of other resources such as SQL Databases, VMs, Virtual Networks, etc...
Can the two (the O365 instance and the Azure AD) use the same domain? Given it seems like Office 365 uses an Azure AD under the covers, my question is really just asking if two Azure Active Directories can use the same domain. Unfortunately, I can't find much online with regards to answers for this and I can't yet test it.
If you had two Active Directory tenants using the same example.com domain, and you logged into the portal with bob#example.com How would the portal know which tenant was responsible for bob?
An Azure Active Directory tenant much be authorative over the domains that are associated with it.
What you can do is associate the Office 365 Active Directory with an Azure subscription (or as many Azure Subscriptions as you have) and then you will have SSO across all of your subscriptions and Office 365.
This is probably the simplest guide on how to achieve that - it is for RemoteApp, but the underlying concept is the same.
Two Azure Active Directories cannot have same domain.
Technically O365 instance with a tenant name (.onmicrosoft.com) is an Azure AD. Office 365 is just a SaaS application attached to every Azure AD. Basically for Office 365, Identity Management backend is Azure AD. Basically if we have a domain abc.com added/verified in tenant A , it means that we can create users in tenant A with user#abc.com. If we were able to add the same domain in tenant B, which is not possible practically but if we consider theoretically, there would be a user user#abc.com in tenant B too! Hence its impossible to have same domain with two Azure AD.
If you have a domain abc.com under a tenant - contoso.onmicrosoft.com (does not matter whether its in Office 365). If we want to view this directory in azure portal (classic) and if you know the global administrator of this directory, we can add it to the Azure Classic portal (use custom directory) option (comes up for live account service admin).
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-how-subscriptions-associated-directory/#manage-the-directory-for-your-office-365-subscription-in-azure
Also, Office 365 subscription gives you benefit of free "Access to Azure Active
Directory" subscription to all office 365 Global administrators. This is given to effectively manage the users in office 365 via Azure AD as well (SSPR, MFA settings- which is not available via O365 portal).
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Register-your-free-Azure-Active-Directory-subscription-d104fb44-1c42-4541-89a6-1f67be22e4ad

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