We have a plan to move on-premise AD to Entra ID. The target is: Remove all local AD DC servers, move devices/users to Intune/Entra ID, all users have M365 now. Move on-premies fileservers to the cloud Join Windows servers (on AWS) to Entra ID The questions are: How to migrate old PCs to Entra ID in an easy way? We are not a big company, only 2XX users. Using SharePoint/Teams file sharing is a good idea, the users will have a learning curve, how can we make them adapt to the changes faster? Ideally, we want to follow No.2 to move the files to SharePoint/Teams, however, they are huge. Can we add the servers into Entra ID , then use the file server as the normal way "\FileServerName" to access the folders? We have MPLS to access AWS.

Hi, Let´s answer your questions: How to migrate old PCs to Entra ID in an easy way? We are not a big company, only 2XX users. Here there is a big "depends" Are your devices hybrid joined? If so, you must remove the device from Entra ID, and then make them Entra ID joined - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/devices/overview?wt.mc_id=studentamb_232547 Using SharePoint/Teams file sharing is a good idea, the users will have a learning curve, how can we make them adapt to the changes faster? You must carry out adoption and training campaigns for your users. https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/?wt.mc_id=studentamb_232547 Ideally, we want to follow No.2 to move the files to SharePoint/Teams, however, they are huge. Can we add the servers into Entra ID , then use the file server as the normal way "\FileServerName" to access the folders? We have MPLS to access AWS. what best suits your needs is to use Azure File - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/storage-files-introduction?wt.mc_id=studentamb_232547 NOTE: If you have additional queries, I recommend creating separate questions for each topic and labeling each question by area of expertise. This way you will be more likely to get answers from experts in each area of expertise. Hope this helps! Remember to accept the answer if it is helpful.

We have plan to move on-premise AD to Entra ID, how to move the windows file server to Entra ID?

Accepted answer

Carlos Solís Salazar 17,971 Reputation points

2024-05-21T11:46:22.1666667+00:00
Hi,

Let´s answer your questions:

How to migrate old PCs to Entra ID in an easy way? We are not a big company, only 2XX users. Here there is a big "depends" Are your devices hybrid joined? If so, you must remove the device from Entra ID, and then make them Entra ID joined - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/devices/overview?wt.mc_id=studentamb_232547

Using SharePoint/Teams file sharing is a good idea, the users will have a learning curve, how can we make them adapt to the changes faster? You must carry out adoption and training campaigns for your users. https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/?wt.mc_id=studentamb_232547

Ideally, we want to follow No.2 to move the files to SharePoint/Teams, however, they are huge. Can we add the servers into Entra ID , then use the file server as the normal way "\FileServerName" to access the folders? We have MPLS to access AWS. what best suits your needs is to use Azure File - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/storage-files-introduction?wt.mc_id=studentamb_232547

NOTE: If you have additional queries, I recommend creating separate questions for each topic and labeling each question by area of expertise. This way you will be more likely to get answers from experts in each area of expertise.

Hope this helps!

Remember to accept the answer if it is helpful.
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1 person found this answer helpful.
Damon Villar 80 Reputation points

2024-05-21T16:09:44.7733333+00:00

Hi Peter,

We are planning on doing the same thing except we will be keeping our file servers on-prem.

Our environment consists on many child domains (customers have their own child domain) that share one Microsoft Entra tenant. We currently sync our on-prem users to the cloud using AD Connect.

Our plan is to create new Microsoft Entra tenants (with Azure subscription) for each customer. We then plan on creating a Microsoft Entra Domain Services domain and joining their on-prem file servers to the managed domain.

An sd-wan appliance will be deployed in Azure to provide the needed connectivity between the cloud managed domain and the on-prem/remote offices.

We then plan on joining their workstation to their respective Microsoft Entra Id tenant.

Now for this to work you will have to build a new file server and join it to the Domain Service domain and configure the appropriate share/ntfs permissions since you will be creating new user accounts, etc in a new tenant. You can then use Intune to configure GPOs as needed on the end users workstations.

In the future we plan on moving the file serves to Azure file shares, but that will probably happen next year. Once we move their file servers to the cloud

we will no longer need to have the managed domain.

Hope this helps!

Peter Huang 20 Reputation points

2024-05-22T18:51:56.9833333+00:00

Thanks a lot, it looks like Azure file sync exactly hit my requirement of item 3. Does it need a permanent on-premise server to do the sync？

Peter Huang 20 Reputation points

2024-05-22T19:06:54.0366667+00:00

@Damon Villar , yes, keeping the on-prem file server (only) is one of our options, the question is how to access the files after the users move to Entra ID? How to keep or transfer the existing shared folders' permission to the Entra ID joined user? The DC controller will be gone and we have no plan to refresh it (the DC physical machine is 10+ years old...)

Damon Villar 80 Reputation points

2024-05-22T21:09:48.2633333+00:00

Peter,

Gather NTFS/Share permissions on your existing file server that is joined to your on-prem domain. You can use Powershell to gather this information.

Build a new file server.

Restore from a backup the data drive from the original file server to the new file server. Join the new file server to the Microsoft Entra Domain Services domain. Once the server is joined to the managed domain you can configure NTFS/Share permissions using the users that exist in your Microsoft Entra Id tenant. When you create a new Microsoft Entra Domain Services domain a one-way sync is automatically configured from your Microsoft Entra Id tenant to the managed domain, so the users that are in your tenant are available in the managed domain.

Join the end users workstation to the tenant and use Intune to configure drive mappings via GPO to the new file server just like you normally would.

More than likely you will move users one at a time to their new tenant, so this means that some users (on-prem) will be accessing the file server on-prem, and some users (cloud) will be accessing the new file server that is on-prem but joined to your Microsoft Entra Id Domain Services domain. So you will have to have a way to keep files in-sync between the two file servers.

I hope this makes sense.
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