Azure Active Directory Domain Services Part I covers fundamental of Azure AD Domain services. Now, this post will cover how to enable/configure AD DS and its pricing/licensing.

To configure, login to the Azure portal.

Click on create a resource and search for Azure AD Domain Services.

From the Azure AD Domain Services portal, click on create.

Define basic settings. Set you DNS domain name in 15 characters and avoid non-routable domain such as insidemstech.local instead use name such as insidemstech1.com.

(Note: I am trying to use insidemstch.local to do some research but you should avoid non-routable domain.)

Set virtual network. (Best practice: Create a new dedicated subnet for AD DS)

Select “Create mew to define a subnet”.

Define your virtual network and click on create.

Once configured, click on Ok.

Here select administrators who are supposed to manage domain services. You can manage group membership later as well.

Review the configuration from summary tab and click on OK to start the deployment process.

This deployment process will take approximately 20-30 minutes for each domain controller. Once completed successfully, you will be able to see resources inside resource group.

Now, let see the pricing of Azure AD DS services. Microsoft has made it very simple based on the number of users and there is no up-front cost for this service.

Azure AD DS count all objects part of this domain that includes users, groups and domain-joined computers.

Like most of the services, Microsoft offers 99.9% SLA for user authentication belongs to managed domain, DNS lookup for records and LDAP bind to the root DSE.