Can I replace a file server & active directory with azure?

Boe Dillard 666 Reputation points
2021-06-11T14:25:00.077+00:00

Hello,

I don't really know much about azure other than we set up adsync for our hybrid exchange a while back. I think adsync goes to azure and I think MFA goes to azure.

We use AD for three things - 1 so people can sign in with a password on just about any workstation joined to our domain. 2 to map drives to our shares. 3. We set up groups - e.g. sales, accounting, HR - to restrict who has access to what shares. Ideally all of these things would go to the cloud.

We current store all our files on our file server - not sure if the correct cloud storage solution is onedrive, sharepoint or azure. We'll want to be able to restrict who has access based on what groups they belong to as well as being a member of the domain

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An Azure service that offers file shares in the cloud.
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SharePoint
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A group of Microsoft Products and technologies used for sharing and managing content, knowledge, and applications.
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  1. Boe Dillard 666 Reputation points
    2021-06-12T18:17:16.697+00:00

    Just to be clear - I'm hoping for something that gets to the point quickly.

    Most of the MS articles I've seen seem to be a 50,000 foot response. E.g. How do I replace the turn rod on a Wankel rotary engine. Article - the ancient Greeks used steam power to move simple automations when coins were deposited by worshippers - a page later, during Ming dynasty used combustion based machinery... Must resist overwhelming urge to kill myself or the person who wrote this article...

    What I'd like is a simple article - using your subscription 365 for the company create a central storage location using... Create groups in... Give rights to the shared subfolders by.... (insert image of actual interface) Your total storage is based on the number of x 365 subcriptions and the total central shared location holds z Gigabytes based on x subscriptions times y default gigabytes = z total gigabytes.

    Cloud based AD gives you these features but not these features of an on prem AD server. This is how to set up an azure or cloud ad server...

    1 person found this answer helpful.
  2. Wendy Li_MSFT 1,711 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-06-14T02:27:41.51+00:00

    @Boe Dillard Per your description, I understand you want to find a cloud storage solution to replace the old on-prem file server, is it right?

    OneDrive is designed for individual use, with the occasional sharing of files. SharePoint sites are used to store files that have shared ownership where several people own the files and might collaborate on them. You can choose them based on your requirement.

    The below lists the details about OneDrive and SharePoint:
    105176-image.png

    For more information about setting up file storage and share in M365, you can refer to the article.

    To set permission based on groups, you can create Azure AD Security Groups or Microsoft 365 groups, then grant the groups needed permissions.

    About groups in Microsoft 365, you can refer to this article.

    Please check if the above helps you, if any misunderstanding, please free feel to reply.

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    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  3. Boe Dillard 666 Reputation points
    2021-06-12T00:05:36.253+00:00

    We are not currently using azure for anything other than MFA for 365 hosted email.

    Sorry it should have said we currently store all our files on our on prem file server. We are looking for a cloud storage solution for a file server - and are not sure what the right choice is - onedrive, sharepoint or azure. We want to get rid of all our on prem physical servers.

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