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Group writeback with Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync

With the release of provisioning agent 1.1.1370.0, cloud sync now has the ability to perform group writeback. This feature means that cloud sync can provision groups directly to your on-premises Active Directory environment. You can also now use identity governance features to govern access to AD-based applications, such as by including a group in an entitlement management access package.

Diagram of group writeback with cloud sync.

Important

The preview of Group Writeback v2 in Microsoft Entra Connect Sync is deprecated and no longer supported.

You can use Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync to provision cloud security groups to on-premises Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).

If you use Group Writeback v2 in Microsoft Entra Connect Sync, you should move your sync client to Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync. To check if you're eligible to move to Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync, use the user synchronization wizard.

If you can't use Microsoft Cloud Sync as recommended by the wizard, you can run Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync side-by-side with Microsoft Entra Connect Sync. In that case, you might run Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync only to provision cloud security groups to on-premises AD DS.

If you provision Microsoft 365 groups to AD DS, you can keep using Group Writeback v1.

Provision Microsoft Entra ID to Active Directory Domain Services - Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are required to implement provisioning groups to Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).

License requirements

Using this feature requires Microsoft Entra ID P1 licenses. To find the right license for your requirements, see Compare generally available features of Microsoft Entra ID.

General requirements

  • Microsoft Entra account with at least a Hybrid Identity Administrator role.
  • On-premises AD DS environment with Windows Server 2016 operating system or later.
    • Required for AD DS schema attribute - msDS-ExternalDirectoryObjectId
  • Provisioning agent with build version 1.1.3730.0 or later.

Note

The permissions to the service account are assigned during clean install only. If you're upgrading from the previous version, then permissions need to be assigned manually by using PowerShell:

$credential = Get-Credential  

Set-AAD DSCloudSyncPermissions -PermissionType UserGroupCreateDelete -TargetDomain "FQDN of domain" -EACredential $credential

If the permissions are set manually, you need to assign Read, Write, Create, and Delete all properties for all descendant Groups and User objects.

These permissions aren't applied to AdminSDHolder objects by default. For more information, see Microsoft Entra provisioning agent gMSA PowerShell cmdlets.

  • The provisioning agent must be able to communicate with one or more domain controllers on ports TCP/389 (LDAP) and TCP/3268 (Global Catalog).
    • Required for Global Catalog lookup to filter out invalid membership references
  • Microsoft Entra Connect Sync with build version 2.22.8.0
    • Required to support on-premises user membership synchronized using Microsoft Entra Connect Sync
    • Required to synchronize AD DS:user:objectGUID to AAD DS:user:onPremisesObjectIdentifier

Supported groups and scale limits

The following is supported:

  • Only cloud-native or SOA converted (from AD DS to Microsoft Entra ID) security groups are supported.
  • These groups can have assigned or dynamic membership groups.
  • These groups can only contain on-premises synchronized users or additional cloud created security groups.
  • The on-premises user accounts that are synchronized and are members of this cloud created security group, can be from the same domain or cross-domain, but they all must be from the same forest.
  • These groups are written back with the group scope of Universal. Your on-premises environment must support the Universal group scope.
  • Groups that are larger than 50,000 members aren't supported.
  • Tenants that have more than 150,000 objects aren't supported. Meaning, if a tenant has any combination of users and groups that exceeds 150K objects, the tenant isn't supported.
  • Each direct child nested group counts as one member in the referencing group
  • Reconciliation of groups between Microsoft Entra ID and AD DS isn't supported if the group is manually updated in AD DS.

Additional information

Here's more points to consider when you provision groups to AD DS.

  • Groups provisioned to AD DS using Cloud Sync can only contain on-premises synchronized users or other cloud-created security groups.
  • These users must have the onPremisesObjectIdentifier attribute set on their account.
  • The onPremisesObjectIdentifier must match a corresponding objectGUID in the target AD DS environment.
  • An on-premises user objectGUID attribute can be synchronized to a cloud user onPremisesObjectIdentifier attribute by using either sync client.
  • Only global Microsoft Entra ID tenants can provision from Microsoft Entra ID to AD DS. Tenants such as B2C aren't supported.
  • The group provisioning job is scheduled to run every 20 minutes.

Supported scenarios for group writeback with Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync

The following sections describe the supported scenarios for group writeback with Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync.

Migrate Microsoft Entra Connect Sync group writeback V2 to Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync

Scenario: Migrate group writeback using Microsoft Entra Connect Sync (formerly Azure AD Connect) to Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync. This scenario is only for customers who are currently using Microsoft Entra Connect group writeback v2. The process outlined in this document pertains only to cloud-created security groups that are written back with a universal scope. Mail-enabled groups and DLs written back using Microsoft Entra Connect group writeback V1 or V2 aren't supported.

For more information see Migrate Microsoft Entra Connect Sync group writeback V2 to Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync.

Govern on-premises Active Directory based apps (Kerberos) using Microsoft Entra ID Governance

Scenario: Manage on-premises applications with Active Directory groups that are provisioned from and managed in the cloud. Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync allows you to fully govern application assignments in AD while taking advantage of Microsoft Entra ID Governance features to control and remediate any access related requests.

For more information see Govern on-premises Active Directory based apps (Kerberos) using Microsoft Entra ID Governance.

Next steps