What’s the difference between AAD Connect and Cloud Sync?
The following illustration was created by Tom Cutting. He writes:
You may have both at the same time, great for high availability of password hash sync to the cloud.
Cloud sync is also great for merger and acquisition situations where some identities are required in the cloud but not connected to the domain that hosts your primary DirSync instance (and you don’t want to use AAD Guest Accounts).
For more details on Azure AD Connect vs Azure AD Connect Cloud Sync, read the following & look up the table comparing each sync solutions capabilities:
- DOCS: What is Azure AD Connect cloud sync?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/cloud-sync/what-is-cloud-sync - TUTORIAL: Pilot cloud sync for an existing synced AD forest
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/cloud-sync/tutorial-pilot-aadc-aadccp - TROUBLESHOOTING: Azure AD Connect cloud sync troubleshooting
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/cloud-sync/how-to-troubleshoot
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