Forum Discussion
Ownership of an Azure DevOps organisation
I and my colleagues have had Visual Studio Enterprise subscriptions for many years now (since they were MSDN Universal), through the company we work for. Some time ago I set up an Azure DevOps organisation under my account, and it is now used for all our repositories, pipelines, etc. I'm getting to the age were retirement is an option, and I'm concerned about the organisation being tied to my VSEnt subscription rather than our company's Azure account. I've been doing a bit of research on it, and the advice talks about creating a tenant and connecting the organisation to its Entra directory. My organisation is already connected to our Entra directory though, and we've always been able to add users from our AD. Would this have been done automatically because the account linked to VSEnt was part of our AD? More importantly, does this mean the organisation would survive the expiry of my VSEnt subscription? I'm currently the owner of the organisation, but changing that seems fairly straightforward. With that change and presence of the Entra link, does that mean I've nothing to worry about, or is there more to do?
4 Replies
Thanks both, that's reassuring. We've got so much stuff on ADO that losing it would be an absolute disaster
Hi kev160967
I recently went through a somewhat similar scenario. We had a legacy Azure DevOps organization tied to an Entra ID and Azure subscription that we were planning to sunset.
In our case, we simply reattached the organization to a different Entra ID and updated the billing to a new Azure subscription. While your situation is a bit different, it touches on many of the same components of DevOps management.
As long as your DevOps organization is connected to your company’s Entra ID and billing is linked to one of the company’s Azure subscriptions, you should be in good shape. Just make sure that at least one other person—ideally more—is added to the Project Collection Administrators group. And before you retire, don’t forget to transfer ownership of the organization to a colleague or a service account.
Hope that helps, and wishing you all the best in your retirement!
Thanks, very helpful. Retirement is still some years off, by the way, but thank you anyway 😀
Since your organization is already connected to your company's Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), it likely means that the link was established automatically when you created the organization under your Visual Studio Enterprise (VSEnt) subscription, assuming your account was part of the company's directory. This connection allows users from your Active Directory (AD) to be added seamlessly.
Now, regarding the survival of your Azure DevOps organization after your VSEnt subscription expires—the good news is that Azure DevOps organizations are not inherently tied to individual subscriptions. Your organization should remain intact even if your VSEnt subscription lapses, as long as it is linked to your company's Entra ID tenant and not solely dependent on your personal subscription for billing or access.
However, there are a few things to double-check:
- Ownership Transfer – Since you're currently the owner, transferring ownership to another trusted colleague or an admin account within your company would be a wise step. This ensures that administrative control remains within the organization.
- Billing Setup – If your Azure DevOps organization is linked to your VSEnt subscription for billing, you may need to transition it to your company's Azure subscription to avoid disruptions in paid services like CI/CD pipelines, extra user licenses, or extensions.
- Access & Permissions – Ensure that key users have the necessary permissions to manage repositories, pipelines, and settings so that operations continue smoothly.
If your organization is already linked to your company's Entra ID, and you successfully transfer ownership, you should be in a good position without needing additional major changes. But it's always a good idea to verify billing dependencies and permissions before stepping away.
(copilot assisted🙂)
