Who is the Azure AD Connect Masterclass for?
Our NEW 3-day AAD Connect Masterclass is for architects and administrators responsible for connecting their on-premises Active Directory with an Azure Active Directory tenant who want to:
- Understand what Azure AD Connect can do beyond its ‘out-of-the-box’ form and investigate its many additional capabilities
- Learn how to configure and maintain it, and which configurations are supported
AAD Connect is now a key part of a hybrid AD infrastructure. The “out-of-the-box” installation offers some great features, and it is important that these are fully understood. But it’s also vital to learn about the additional configurations that are possible, and which are supported.
Having the optimal configuration for your organization will enable you to provide consistent, secure and user-friendly authentication, as well as consistent authorization across on-premises and cloud applications through automated and reliable group management – even in complex environments, and all while minimizing the strain on your administrators and helpdesk staff.
The Azure AD Connect Masterclass covers both the ‘easy’ things (installation and configuration using the wizard) as well as ‘harder’ things, like multi-forest configuration and the configuration of single sign-on.
Familiarity with AD and basic concepts of authentication will be advantageous – the same goes for Exchange (unless you will never use it).
Azure AD Connect is based on Microsoft Identity Manager, and while we will call out similarities and differences, no prior knowledge is required – and the same goes for Azure Active Directory.
The training comprises presentations, discussions, demonstrations, and a lot of hands-on exercises. The hands-on labs – which are crucial to a proper understanding of the topics covered – have been made as realistic as possible. So for example, students will use a real domain and fully implement Azure AD Connect in various configurations. The labs are complex and reflect issues you will face in the real world.
Training outcomes
At the end of the course you’ll understand:
- Everything you can do through the wizard, and how to extend that
- Different authentication options – how you move from one to the other, and how they interact
- The relationship between AAD Connect and MIM
- AAD Connect architecture and configuration, understanding and editing rules, and handling errors
- Scheduling, statistics, basic troubleshooting, high availability, and AAD Connect health
- Managing AAD Connect with PowerShell
- Precedence, provisioning/deprovisioning, joining rules, and transformations
- Upgrading, backup, restore and recovery options
- Multi-forest, multi-tenant and non-AD directory scenarios
- Integrating cloud-based HR systems
- What’s supported and what’s not
- And much more…see the course outline tab (above) for detail.
This course was written by Andreas Kjellman (formerly MIM and Azure AD Connect Program Manager for Microsoft), Hugh Simpson-Wells (CEO, OCG), Jimmy Andersson (MVP Enterprise Mobility) and James Cowling (CTO, OCG).

There is very little overlap between this Azure AD Connect Masterclass and the Identity Masterclass with John Craddock
- The Identity Masterclass with John Craddock uses Azure AD Connect in its simplest out-of-the-box configuration. The Azure AD Connect Masterclass examines Azure AD Connect deeply.
- The Identity Masterclass with John Craddock examines authentication issues in detail. The Azure AD Connect Masterclass covers authentication only to the extent that is needed to demonstrate the different configuration options.