Microsoft Entra Connect: When you have an existing tenant

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Most of the topics for how to use Microsoft Entra Connect assumes you start with a new Microsoft Entra tenant and that there are no users or other objects there. But if you started with a Microsoft Entra tenant, populated it with users and other objects, and now want to use Connect, then this topic is for you.

The basics

An object in Microsoft Entra ID is either managed in the cloud or on-premises. For one single object, you can't manage some attributes on-premises and some other attributes in Microsoft Entra ID. Each object has a flag indicating where the object is managed.

You can manage some users on-premises and others in the cloud. A common scenario for this configuration is an organization with a mix of accounting workers and sales workers. The accounting workers have an on-premises AD account, but the sales workers don't, but both have an account in Microsoft Entra ID. You would manage some users on-premises and some in Microsoft Entra ID.

There are some extra concerns you need to consider when you started to manage users in Microsoft Entra ID, that are also present on-premises, and later want to use Microsoft Entra Connect.

Sync with existing users in Microsoft Entra ID

When you start synchronizing with Microsoft Entra Connect, the Microsoft Entra service API checks every new incoming object and tries to find an existing object to match. There are three attributes used for this process: userPrincipalName, proxyAddresses, and sourceAnchor/immutableID. A match on userPrincipalName or proxyAddresses is known as a "soft-match." A match on sourceAnchor is known as "hard=match." For the proxyAddresses attribute only the value with SMTP:, that is the primary email address, is used for the evaluation.

The match is only evaluated for new objects coming from Connect. If you change an existing object so it matches any of these attributes, then you see an error instead.

If Microsoft Entra ID finds an object where the attribute values are the same as the new incoming object from Microsoft Entra Connect, then it takes over the object in Microsoft Entra ID and the previously cloud-managed object is converted to on-premises managed. All attributes in Microsoft Entra ID with a value in on-premises AD are overwritten with the respective on-premises value.

Warning

Since all attributes in Microsoft Entra ID are going to be overwritten by the on-premises value, make sure you have good data on-premises. For example, if you only have managed email address in Microsoft 365 and not kept it updated in on-premises AD DS, then you lose any values in Microsoft Entra ID / Microsoft 365 not present in AD DS.

Important

If you use password sync, which is always used by express settings, then the password in Microsoft Entra ID is overwritten with the password in on-premises AD. If your users are used to managing different passwords, then you need to inform them that they should use the on-premises password when you have installed Connect.

The previous section and warning must be considered in your planning. If you made many changes in Microsoft Entra ID which were not reflected in on-premises AD DS, then to prevent data loss, you need to plan on how to populate AD DS with the updated values from Microsoft Entra ID, before you sync your objects with Microsoft Entra Connect.

If you matched your objects with a soft-match, then the sourceAnchor is added to the object in Microsoft Entra ID so a hard match can be used later.

Important

Microsoft strongly recommends against synchronizing on-premises accounts with pre-existing administrative accounts in Microsoft Entra ID.

Hard-match vs Soft-match

By default, the SourceAnchor value of "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv==" is calculated by Microsoft Entra Connect by using MsDs-ConsistencyGUID attribute (or ObjectGUID depending on the configuration) from on-premises Active Directory. This attribute value is the corresponding ImmutableId in Microsoft Entra ID. When Microsoft Entra Connect (sync engine) adds or updates objects, Microsoft Entra ID matches the incoming object by using the sourceAnchor value corresponding to the ImmutableId attribute of the existent object in Microsoft Entra ID. If there's a match, Microsoft Entra Connect take over that object and updates it with the properties of the incoming on-premises Active Directory object in what is known as ”hard-match.” When Microsoft Entra ID can't find any object with an ImmutableId that matches the SouceAnchor value, it tries to use the incoming object's userPrincipalName or primary ProxyAddress to find a match in what it’s known as *”soft-match.” The soft match tries to match objects already present and managed in Microsoft Entra ID with the new incoming objects being added or updated that represent the same entity on-premises. If Microsoft Entra ID isn't able to find a hard-match or soft-match for the incoming object, it provisions a new object in Microsoft Entra ID directory. We added a configuration option to disable the hard matching feature in Microsoft Entra ID. We advise customers to disable hard matching unless they need it to take over cloud only accounts.

To disable hard matching, use the Update-MgDirectoryOnPremiseSynchronization Microsoft Graph PowerShell cmdlet:

Connect-MgGraph -Environment China -ClientId 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID' -TenantId 'YOUR_TENANT_ID' -Scopes "OnPremDirectorySynchronization.ReadWrite.All"

$OnPremSync = Get-MgDirectoryOnPremiseSynchronization
$OnPremSync.Features.BlockCloudObjectTakeoverThroughHardMatchEnabled = $true
Update-MgDirectoryOnPremiseSynchronization `
    -OnPremisesDirectorySynchronizationId $OnPremSync.Id `
    -Features $OnPremSync.Features

Similarly, we added a configuration option to disable the soft-matching option in Microsoft Entra ID. We advise customers to disable soft matching unless they need it to take over cloud only accounts.

To disable soft matching, use the Update-MgDirectoryOnPremiseSynchronization Microsoft Graph PowerShell cmdlet:

Connect-MgGraph -Environment China -ClientId 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID' -TenantId 'YOUR_TENANT_ID' -Scopes "OnPremDirectorySynchronization.ReadWrite.All"

$OnPremSync = Get-MgDirectoryOnPremiseSynchronization
$OnPremSync.Features.BlockSoftMatchEnabled = $true
Update-MgDirectoryOnPremiseSynchronization `
    -OnPremisesDirectorySynchronizationId $OnPremSync.Id `
    -Features $OnPremSync.Features

Note

BlockCloudObjectTakeoverThroughHardMatchEnabled and BlockSoftMatchEnabled are used to block matching for all objects if enabled for the tenant. Customers are encouraged to disable these features only during the period when a matching procedure is required for their tenancy. This flag should be set to True again after any matching has been completed and is no longer needed.

Other objects than users

For mail-enabled groups and contacts, you can soft match based on proxyAddresses. Hard match isn't applicable since you can only update the sourceAnchor/immutableID (using PowerShell) on Users only. For groups that aren't mail-enabled, there's currently no support for soft match or hard match.

Admin role considerations

To protect from untrusted on-premises users, Microsoft Entra ID won't match on-premises users with cloud users that have an admin role. This behavior is by default. To work around this, you can do the following steps:

  1. Remove the directory roles from the cloud-only user object.
  2. Hard-delete the quarantined object in the cloud.
  3. Trigger a sync.
  4. Optionally, add the directory roles back to the user object in cloud once the matching is done.

Create a new on-premises Active Directory from data in Microsoft Entra ID

Some customers start with a cloud-only solution with Microsoft Entra ID and they don't have an on-premises AD. Later they want to consume on-premises resources and want to build an on-premises AD based on Microsoft Entra data. Microsoft Entra Connect can't help you for this scenario. It doesn't create users on-premises and it doesn't have any ability to set the password on-premises to the same as in Microsoft Entra ID.

If the only reason why you plan to add on-premises AD is to support LOBs (Line-of-Business apps), then maybe you should consider to use Microsoft Entra Domain Services instead.

Next steps

Learn more about Integrating your on-premises identities with Microsoft Entra ID.