1:00 AM
El DiPablo
Greetings fellow geeks. I have a fairly decent article for you today I think. Especially if your company is getting ready to transition to Microsoft Office365 from BPOS or from an on-premise Exchange setup. The reason this may be good for you is I am offering an alternative to their single-sign on (SSO) implementation which uses the extremely complicated Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
This solution comes from the same group I used when I first started managing BPOS for my current company to sync passwords with Microsoft Online called MessageOps. It consists of a client and server setup that captures password changes on your domain controllers and passes them to a server to sync with Microsoft Online. I wrote about that setup for BPOS here: (Sync AD Passwords With BPOS)
Well, Microsoft is forcing all BPOS users to upgrade to Office365 so that means that the old sync server won't work anymore. That's fine, because MessageOps has come up with a tool for Office365 that works the same! Plus it is way easier to setup than ADFS! The only major difference is:
- It has to run on Windows Server 2008 R2
- You must have user's email address specified under the Email section in Active Directory
To make everything work, install the password sync server on a separate server that is not a domain controller. I installed mine on the same server I used to setup Active Directory User Sync. On your domain controllers, install the client and point it to the password sync server. It really can't get any easier than that! Full instructions for setup and configuration can be found here: (How to install and configure Message Ops Password Sync Office365)
For details on how to download this tool visit the MessageOps page here: (Office365 Password Sync)
Pricing for the tool is $5 per user unless you make MessageOps your prefered Microsoft partner, in which case the password sync tool is free!
del.icio.us tags: how to, sync, passwords, ad, active directory, microsoft, office365, adfs, alternative
- Active Directory Integration
- Active Directory Sites - Best Practices
- Microsoft's Windows Azure Active Directory plans takes shape
