What are the costs and licensing requirements to sign into an Azure VM with a Azure AD account?

Question

We have a P1 license as part of the Microsoft Partner Program. We have a Azure VM and we want to start using Azure AD accounts with RBAC to sign into that VM instead of using a local administrator account. Will this be possible for our current license or do we need P2 or even Azure Active Directory Domain Services?

Answer 1

Hi @Charles Hanekom

You will want to join the Windows VM to Azure Directory Domain Services (ADDS):

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/join-windows-vm

Pricing for ADDS:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing/details/active-directory-ds/

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Answer 2

Hi @Charles Hanekom ,

you are talking about an Azure VM that is Azure AD joined?
And you want to login to the Azure VM with a Azure AD User?

If so you don't need a special Azure AD license. Azure AD Premium P1 is only required if you want to use MDM auto-enrollment with Intune.

• Join your Azure VM (Windows 10 1809 and later or Windows Server 2019 and later) to the Azure AD
• Add the users to the Azure Role Virtual Machine Administrator Login or Virtual Machine User Login

More details you will find here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/devices/howto-vm-sign-in-azure-ad-windows

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)

Regards
Andreas Baumgarten

Answer 3

Hello @Charles Hanekom and thanks for reaching out. As pointed out by @Andreas Baumgarten **there is no need for licenses in order to sign-in with an Azure AD account to an Azure VM. **

Let us know if you need additional assistance. If @Andreas Baumgarten answer was helpful, please accept it and complete the quality survey so that others can find a solution.