Migrate hybrid ADDS from on-prem/M365 to cloud only users

Question

Hello all,

My organization is looking to move away from our hybrid Active Directory to Azure Active Directory, but I am not sure where to start.

Currently, our user creation workflow goes like this:

1. Create a user in on-prem AD
2. Wait for the sync to process (I don't know or use the command to sync instantly)
3. Find the user in Microsoft 365 admin center and assign licenses/wait for email to be created

We are a public school, and we only subscribe to Microsoft 365 A1 for faculty. I am not concerned about moving our student accounts to the cloud, as they primarily use Chromebooks/Google logins for their classwork. We only have two significant computer labs, which I would likely set up as local "workstation" logins with Local Security Policies enabled. Our goal is to move away from all on-prem servers and into the cloud (except for DNS/DHCP).

As it stands, all of our users are hybrid synced. We want to move them entirely to the cloud and eventually be able to shut down our Active Directory servers. I worry that the process of doing so will not be easy. We have just moved all of our users to OneDrive/SharePoint as a replacement for a local file server. We also host our email in the cloud with Exchange 365.

I am wondering what steps need to be taken to move Active Directory to the cloud safely, without causing user information to be deleted or email to be broken. Because these are already hybrid on-prem/cloud accounts, I am hoping the task is simple.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use PowerShell to turn off directory synchronization and convert your synchronized users to cloud-only.

Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta

Note: To force the synchronization of the user, use the following PowerShell command to trigger an Azure AD Connect delta synchronization:

Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta

You must be logged in to the Azure AD Connect server to run this command.

Hope this helps!