Upgrading DirSync to Azure ADConnect (Prep for Office365 Cloud PBX)

In a previous post we setup and deployed a Lync2013 environmemt for hybrid split domain with Office365. That environment was later upgraded to Skype for Business 2015 servers while retaining all the hybrid functionality such as users homed on-prem and on-line, as well as Exchange Online with UM. In preparation to deploy and move users to Office365 E5 Cloud PBX with On-Premise PSTN Connectivity, one of the first tasks is to upgrade the existing DirSync server to Azure AD Connect. The version of AAD Connect must be version 1.0.9125.0 or later. This blog posts walk through the steps required and follows the guidance provided in this Azure documentation.

Doing an in-place upgrade of Azure AD Connect will maintain existing filters and settings in the environment and is recommended for installations with less than 50,000 objects in the directory, and should take less than 3 hours. Its important to leave DirSync running while performing the upgrade so that AAD Connect will read and migrate the configuration from DirSync and autmoatically uninstall after inspecting the server. Another important consideration is that DirSync upgrade will fail if there are any unsupported DirSync changes, e.g. removed attributes and using a custom extension DLL, in which case the recommendation is to install a new AAD Connect server in staging mode and re-apply any changes using custom configuration, as described in Azure AD Connect Sync custom configuration. Before starting the upgrade, we also need NET Framework 4.5.1 to be installed on the DirSync server if its running Windows Server 2012, where simply running the Add Roles and Features wizard to add .NET Framework 4.5 is not enough, we also need to download and install the 4.5.1 update from http://www.microsoft.com/en-sg/download/details.aspx?id=40779 which does require a reboot.

We can check our DirSync version by running the following PowerShell cmdlet on the server:
(GP 'hklm:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Online Directory Sync').DisplayVersion

To begin the in-place upgrade we first download the AAD Connect installation files from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=47594 to the DirSync server, which in this lab walkthru happens to be also the Domain Controller. Launch the downloaded .msi file to start the upgrade process:

After agreeing to the license terms and clicking Continue, the wizard will analyze the current DirSync environment to determine if the ugprade can proceed. If successful, it will present us the option to proceed:

As shown in the screen, the estimated time to sync directories is under 1 hour. We click on "Next" to continue to the next stage to enter the Office365 tenant administrator credentials followed by the local AD administrator credentials:

At this point ,we are ready to perform the actual upgrade of DirSync to AAD Connect and start synchronization once the configuratio is completed:

The upgrade process will take some time and after upgrading and configuration is complete, the wizard will show a successful status as shown below:

Unlike DirSync, directory synchronization does not occur every 3 hours. Instead, with AAD Connect a pre-defined scheduler runs the synchronization every 30mins by default, but that can be changed. To start a manual delta sync, we simply start powershell on the server and import the ADSync module to run the "Start-ADSyncCycle -PolicyType delta" cmdlet as shown below:

Finally, we can verify that the sychronization is working by going to the Office365 Admin Portal under the hom page, look at the DirSync Status and note the last sync time as well as any errors as shown below:

This concludes the blog post and in the next article, we will start moving users and phones to Cloud PBX on Office365 E5.