Virtual Machine can't be joined to Azure AD after Sysprep

John_1989AK 1

Hi All,

Need your expert advise.

I have a Windows Virtual Machine image prepared with Sysprep. The image has setupcomplete.cmd where provisioning package (ppkg) does Azure AD domain enrollment. It works fine for laptop or desktop system, but not for VM. When I deploy the Sysprep-image with this provisionong package, Azure AD detects it as one machine. Whatever VMs are deployed, Azure AD see it as one the same machine, seems some GUID or SID not resets during Sysprep. But no any issues for physical Active Directory. The issue only for Azure AD.

I found this:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/devices/azureadjoin-plan#understand-your-provisioning-options

Azure AD joined devices can’t be deployed using System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) or similar imaging tools.

Are there any ways to fix it? Sysprep is needed to generalize the image, so what other options are available?
Please note that the question not related with Azure VMs, I use local VM under Hyper-V, VirtualBox, Parallels Desktop for Mac etc., and want to find a way to get it joined to Azure AD.

Givary-MSFT 32,591 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-07-22T07:38:10.787+00:00

@John_1989AK

Apologies for the delay in answering this post. Reviewed your ask, as you mentioned in your query, Azure AD joined devices can’t be deployed using System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) or similar imaging tools.

Clearly mentioned/documented about this issue in our article https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/devices/azureadjoin-plan#understand-your-provisioning-options, researched/checked with my team as well if there are any workaround/solution to achieve the same, unfortunately couldnt find much information on this.
John_1989AK 1 Reputation point

2022-08-02T20:20:11.317+00:00

Hi @Givary-MSFT ,

thank you for the reply, but I try to enroll in Azure the Virtual Machine which has not been joined to Azure before. So it's a "clear" machine without any connection\link to Azure, and I try to join it to Azure. Is this also not possible? Basically, it's just a simple Virtual Machine that has been deployed using Sysprep. When I try to enroll it to Azure, it joins successfully, but when I try to join a new image to Azure, Azure doesn't see it as a newly joined device and keeps seeing only one device that I added for the first time. Could you please advise?

Thanks.
John_1989AK 1 Reputation point

2022-08-21T03:40:06.547+00:00

Hi @Givary-MSFT , and All,

thank you for the reply, but I try to enroll in Azure the Virtual Machine which has not been joined to Azure before. So it's a "clear" machine without any connection\link to Azure, and I try to join it to Azure. Is this also not possible? Basically, it's just a simple Virtual Machine that has been deployed using Sysprep. When I try to enroll it to Azure, it joins successfully, but when I try to join a new image to Azure, Azure doesn't see it as a newly joined device and keeps seeing only one device that I added for the first time. Could you please advise?

Thanks.
John_1989AK 1 Reputation point

2022-08-22T12:15:12.85+00:00

Hi All,

I'd be very appreciative if someone have any input on this issue.
Paul Birtle 0 Reputation points

2023-04-26T13:52:51.7266667+00:00

Did you manage to resolve this? I'm hitting the same issue.

Share via

Virtual Machine can't be joined to Azure AD after Sysprep

Your answer