Is there a way to connect to Azure AD using LDAP?

Question

We have applications which works with on-premise AD and now we want to migrate to Azure AD. Still we would like our applications use LDAP protocol to connect to Azure AD so that our applications can continue to work till the time we completely migrate to Azure AD and the supported way of authentication or authorization.

Regards,
Rambabu

Answer 1

Hi @Rambabu Vegula · Thank you for reaching out.

Azure AD doesn't support LDAP. In order to fetch any information from Azure AD, REST is used. However, if you want to decommission on-premises Active Directory domain controllers, you can choose to go with Azure AD Domain Services which is a managed service and you don't need to deploy any VMs in Azure and promote those VMs as Domain Controllers. The Domain Controllers deployed with Azure AD Domain Service are synced with Azure AD and any users/groups created in Azure AD gets synced to Azure AD Domain Services. Along with LDAP, it also supports Group Policy, Kerberos and NTLM.

To summarize, you can use Azure AD Domain Services for any legacy applications that cannot be used with Azure AD.

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