Sorry for the noob question - I'm a developer and don't know much about Windows administration. I'm upgrading from TFS 2017 to Azure Devops Server (onPrem). This will be on a new set of boxes though so it's not an in-plaee upgrade. Right now I'm doing proof-of-concept testing on a machine not on our domain so obviously I can't add users from the domain. My question is once I install Azure Devops Server on a machine on the domain will it automatically sync with the corporate domain? I've read that that happens once an hour - I'm just wondering if there's anything I need to install/setup to make that happen.
What you need is to join the Windows server which installs Azure DevOps Server to Active Directory.
After that it will automatically sync with the corporate domain.
However, Azure DevOps use a background synchronization job, scheduled every hour, to look for changes in Active Directory (or the local machine workgroup if the server is not domain joined). So changes you make to local or Active Directory groups do not get reflected in Azure DevOps immediately. Instead, Azure DevOps will synchronize those groups regularly (by default every hour).
That's all required. After this, you could directly add domain users or groups to groups in Azure DevOps server.
You can also try to force Azure DevOps Server to sync with Active Directory by following instructions mentioned in this article: How to synchronize TFS users with AD (Active Directory)?, it's still available for current Azure DevOps Server versions.
Related
We are evaluating Azure DevOps Server 2022, specifically using the Git repositories function. We require an on-premise solution due to some compliance requirements, which is why we aren't using Azure DevOps Services (cloud).
Something I can't wrap my brain around is application of new permissions. We configured some AD security groups and added to the appropriate DevOps groups. We have groups for Collection admins, project admins, build admins, and contributors. Everything looks great until we add a user to one of the groups. It seems the Azure DevOps server doesn't see membership changes until after an unspecified amount of time, sometimes as much as 24 hours.
My question is, why wouldn't group memberships be seen and applied with Azure DevOps immediately, and is there a process to force DevOps to check for and sync/refresh group memberships? Anything I find via a Google search always references Azure AD sync-related configurations, whereas our implementation is strictly on-premise using ADDS, not Azure AD.
Restarting the server and any related services.
TFS/Azure DevOps Server use a background synchronization job, scheduled every hour, to look for changes in Active Directory (or the local machine workgroup if the server is not domain joined). So, changes you make to local or Active Directory groups do not get reflected in TFS/Azure DevOps Server immediately. Instead, TFS/Azure DevOps Server will synchronize those groups regularly (by default every hour).
You can force the job to run using any of these techniques: How to synchronize TFS users with AD.
It could be that you still do not see the user or name listed in the UI even if synchronization is working. The synchronization job does not automatically create a user profile in the database for every user or group in the database, to avoid useless growth in big enterprises.
In such a case, the first time you use a new AD account (user or group), you must refer to it uses DOMAIN\account syntax so that TFS/Azure DevOps Server look up in AD on the fly and insert a profile record in the database for the account.
Further Troubleshooting Mr. Hinsh has a good troubleshooting guide if you still have troubles. It's still applied to Azure DevOps Server.
I've got an active directory and azure devops server 2020 on windows server . How can I connect the two? My server is not connected to the Internet.
Active Directory works with Domain Services. See Active Directory Domain Services Overview for details.
What you need is to join the Windows server which installs Azure DevOps Server to Domain. Please refer to Join a Computer to a Domain for details.
After that it will automatically sync with the corporate domain.
However, Azure DevOps use a background synchronization job, scheduled every hour, to look for changes in Active Directory (or the local machine workgroup if the server is not domain joined). So changes you make to local or Active Directory groups do not get reflected in Azure DevOps immediately. Instead, Azure DevOps will synchronize those groups regularly (by default every hour).
That's all required. After this, you could directly add domain users or groups to groups in Azure DevOps server.
After reading this documentation https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/organizations/security/about-permissions?view=azure-devops-2020&tabs=preview-page#active-directory-and-azure-active-directory-security-groups it seems that Azure DevOps Server on premises can be used only with Active Directory but not with Azure Active Directory. Is it correct? Is there a way to use Azure DevOps Server with Azure Active Directory?
You are right, as on-premises Azure DevOps Server, is built on a SQL
Server back end which can work with on-prem AD .
Azure ad authentication for on prem directly is not feasible as it is
cloud based and involves azure based sql .
Note: On-premise SQL Server only supports Windows Authentication and
SQL Server Authentication. Windows authentication depends on Kerberos
(or NTLM), which needs an Active Directory domain to authenticate the
user in. Azure Active Directory does not handle Kerberos tokens.
But we can opt to migrate devops server to azure devops services to
work with AAD .Migration is when one wants to completely move to
cloud and it involves complex process as database/hardware is
involved.
If one wants to continue on premise server to use existing on-premises
identities with Azure DevOps, you can integrate directories with
Azure AD by using Azure AD Connect which connects an organization’s
on-prem Active Directory instance and cloud-based azure active
directory.It involves On prem users to be mapped to AAD tenant.
Please refer this Document.
Other References:
PTA
Migrate - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Docs
I am using visualstudio.com Teams Services to build and deploy an ASP.NET website to two Azure VMs.
I have a build which on completion triggers a release to my two servers in a deployment group. When you configure a Deployment Group for Visual Studio Team Services you create an agent that by default runs as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM.
If I publish my build artifacts to Azure (the server option) then everything works fine and deployment succeeds to both my VMS. However when using a file-drop I get the following error:
The artifact directory does not exist:
\\MACHINE1\drop\RRStore\20170517.20. It can happen if the password of
the account NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM is changed recently and is not updated
for the agent.
This is basically saying MACHINE2 cannot access \\MACHINE1\drop due to permissions. In windows I can bring up this folder just fine, but since the agent is running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM it cannot access it.
I want to use a filedrop because my website is about 250MB (although in the meantime I am using the 'publish to server' option and deploying via team services.)
I am unclear how to give permissions to the file drop though as the agent is running as SYSTEM. I am running as a WORKGROUP and giving permissions to 'Everyone' does not seem to work.
What is the correct way to configure access to a VSTS drop folder so that the deployment agent can access it?
Few possible options:
Set up a domain (I tried doing this but then I need a new network interface and it sounds klunky)
Continue using teamservices to deploy the artifacts (or reduce the website size!)
Save to a storage account, but again I'm not sure how to configure that.
Run as a different user account
I have similar problems when deploying with VSTS. Instead I chose to:
Run VSTS agent on the deployment group VM as a local user with limited access.
Impersonate the account on the deployment group VM to test its access to the drop folder.
Save/cache a different credential to access the drop folder if applicable.
(So the sensitive information stays on the VM.)
The cached credentials can be a different local user account created on the drop server just for this purpose.
Grant the local user access to various parts of the file system explicitly to limit access permission of this VSTS agent service runner account.
This should work in most cases. In fact, this same way is used in my VSTS, Jenkins and TFS instances. This should prevent you from setting up a domain to solve this problem.
This may not be the best practice, but at least it should get you started in the right direction.
Im kinda new to Windows server, but have been checking out Microsoft Azure and like the IaaS.
Just a question about SSO verse Azure Active Directory Sync.
Im moving my infrastructure into Azure, my base is a AD server, "dirsync" or AD FS server and a few web servers etc. We use Google Apps for Email, Calendar and Drive.
So I see that there are two ways to keep my AD directory and Azure directory in sync. SSO and Azure Active Directory Sync.
If I use Azure Active Directory Sync and not setup AD FS on a server with SSO, will I still be able to use SSO with my Azure Directory to Apps the Microsoft have in the Azure portal?
The only reason I would need a AD FS server if I had Apps/Services on site that I wanted to use SSO with, correct?
I plan to run, kayako and CrashPlan in two VM's in Azure. Both will use LDAP/AD for usernames/password authentication. But would be cool to get SSO for both webapps so employees can sing-on via the myapps.microsoft.com portal.
The two ways are DirSync and AAD Sync. Refer: Synchronization Previews Now Available for Microsoft Azure Active Directory.
Sync = Same Sign On between on-premise and cloud
Sync + ADFS = Single Sign On between on-premise and cloud
Update
myapps.microsoft.com is for third-party vendors like SalesForce who have asked Microsoft to add them as a SaaS application to AAD. It's not for company specific apps.
For company specific apps., you need ADFS as above.
Having done that, if your user SSO's into your app. and then wants to use e.g. SalesForce, they won't have to login again.