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Confused with term Active Directory

Is On-premise Active Directory (Windows Active Directory) same as Azure Active Directory? In continuation to my previous blog post, this was one of another question asked to me.     

Well, although these both are active directories but there are few differences though. Let’s have a look at those:

  • Location - The most basic difference is, Windows AD is on-premise whereas Azure AD is cloud based.
  • Initial moto – As Azure AD is a cloud based, some web service support is associated, unlike unadorned AD
  • Protocols Used – Both the active directories use different protocols. As Azure AD uses SAML and oAuth whereas unadorned AD relies on NTLM and Kerberos for authentication and LDAP to query/modify
  • Platform support – When it comes to provide support on other platforms apart from Windows, it is nightmare with Windows AD and requires more time and effort. But the same thing can be executed very smoothly with Azure AD as it just needs a registration with any one of your Microsoft cloud application, i.e. o365, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Azure, etc. Happy learning.

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