A legacy application being lifted onto Azure virtual machines authenticates users with Kerberos, reads a directory over LDAP, and needs its server domain joined. The team does not want to build, patch and replicate domain controllers. What do you use?
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), objective architecture-and-services. Azure architecture and services medium
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The options
Correct Microsoft Entra Domain Services
Correct. It provides managed domain services — domain join, group policy, LDAP and the older authentication protocols — without you deploying or maintaining any domain controllers yourself.
Not correct Microsoft Entra ID on its own
Wrong. Entra ID is a cloud identity service that speaks modern protocols such as OAuth, SAML and OpenID Connect. It does not offer LDAP binds, Kerberos tickets or domain join — which is exactly the gap Domain Services fills.
Not correct Azure role-based access control
Wrong layer. Role-based access control authorises actions against Azure resources. It is not a directory an application can authenticate its own users against.
Not correct Microsoft Entra Conditional Access
Wrong. Conditional Access decides whether a sign-in to Entra ID proceeds and on what terms. The legacy application is not asking Entra ID anything in the first place.
Why
Split the directory question by protocol. An application speaking modern web protocols talks to Entra ID. An application that wants Kerberos, LDAP or a domain to join needs domain services, and Entra Domain Services provides those as a managed service so nobody has to run domain controllers on virtual machines. The two are complementary rather than alternatives: the managed domain is populated from the same directory.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Microsoft AZ-900 study guide skill area architecture-and-services.identity-access-security
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