Forum Discussion
Moving small business from local domain to Entra
I'm planning on moving a company of about 50 users and around 75 computers, from our local domain (2016 server) to 365/Entra. My biggest hurdle is that the company is heavy into Google Workspace, all our documents, email, etc., and our owners/management are heavy users and very comfortable with it.
My initial plan was to set up MS 365 Business Standard and move the whole company over a long weekend, cloud migration from Google to 365, computers all in Entra, etc. However, I now think this a lot for even a long weekend and I was hoping to maybe do this in stages. Perhaps get us going with Microsoft Entra ID P1, move our domain computers to it and get my feet wet with Entra management, etc. Stage two would likely be hiring a company with experience to migrate us over from Workspace.
So basically just looking for advice, would this work at all without also migrating users/email as well? Is it possible to just unhook our domain workstations and add them into Entra under a single, admin account?
Thanks for any help,
Andy
2 Replies
I've never done this from Google. Are you getting rid of the DC? In our environments, we maintain the DC's, and sync those credentials to Entra. We use Entra P1 for it's cloud protection properties. I've not yet setup an environment where we completely get rid of the DC - though I would love to.
For migrating email, we use a service called BitTitan - they have a migration app that's pretty well documented, and pretty popular. I've only used it for migrating from GoDaddy, but I think it does GSuite as well. We do have to disable 2FA temporarily for this, but that's my only complaint. Microsoft has a tool in Entra for this as well, called Entra ID join.
I'm working on some device registration stuff right now. If you add them all under the admin account, they'll be registered to that admin account in Entra. Users will be able to login, and register it to them as well. It's just through the 'Add work account' tool. Depends if this works for you or not.
I think you should get your feet wet with Entra/Cloud first... It's a lot. Like it's genuinely a lot, and the documentation is .... written by a mix of marketing, users and people who're just trying to figure it out. Not the developers, afaik. I'm not sure if Google has an equivalent to Entra's Identity Protection stuff - App Protection is pretty confusing at first. This talks about Entra Join - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/devices/device-join-plan , but there's also a lot of 'have you considered THIS extra product you don't probably want?' to it. Give yourself lots of time to get frustrated.Hey thanks for the reply, yes I absolutely plan on getting rid of our local DC, it's probably 1/2 the reason for the cloud move. There really isn't any compelling reason for us to go hybrid, I'm all for just moving it all to Entra in one shot.
I have looked at BiTitan as it's what most people have mentioned, I'm just not sure if I'm brave enough to manage the cloud migration on my own. I know enough to know it's not a one and done click so to speak, there are things you need to do before and after you migrate.
Yes, the thing tripping me up a lot is the way you join computers to Entra vs. a local DC. I'm just used to adding computers to the domain as the domain admin and not having user accounts for regular staff having anything to do with it. Most of what I've seen for tutorials is all about using AutoPilot or provisioning packages to bulk add all your computers into Entra. However, as my DC has some issues, I'm not sure automation will work and I was thinking I might just do each PC manually, one by one. I just couldn't find anything on doing it this way or if it was at all a good idea.
I have a 365 Premium account and I have been playing with it and yes, it's a lot. Nothing seems too complicated to me but I know just from the size of it all it's a lot to learn and adjust to. You're very right about documentation, I've been frustrated because there isn't a single, good source I can find on the "right" way to do things. It also evolves so fast that training guides/videos become outdated quickly it seems.
Thanks for the tips!
