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Microsoft Cloud Sync  is a new solution for achieving your hybrid identity synchronizing contacts, groups, and users with Microsoft Entra ID—is Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync.

Rather than using the Microsoft Entra Connect it makes use of the Microsoft Entra cloud provisioning agent. In this article series we will take a look at the steps to migrate from Entra ID connect to Microsoft cloud sync (After detailed analysis)

We will choose only a Pilot OU on this part to see if the synchronization is getting successful for these Pilot OU.

Below are the benefits of migrating to Cloud Sync:

1. Config is easily managed from Azure AD portal
2. Cloud Sync does not require SQL server licensing (Azure AD Connect requires a SQL Server database to store identity data)
3. It’s a light weight agent no heavy dependencies of need to setup a local DB SQL backend
4. Deployment complexity & maintenance is fair less

Moving on to resiliency:

1. Multiple agents can be installed for parallel sync.
2. Whereas Azure AD connect uses Active & Staging mode to achieve some resiliency.

Regarding performance :

1. Its capable of performing Sequential Sync
2. Supports Sync to a single tenant from a multi-forest disconnected AD environments

So the question comes here first like ok this seems to be nice but I already have my environment setup and running in Azure AD connect.

What is the steps to migrate to Microsoft Cloud Sync ?

Below are the steps to do that.

First things first (Lets be very honest here )

Not all environments are capable of moving to Cloud Sync .

So we need to first evaluate any environment before choosing this option.

How do I validate ?

You can use the Microsoft setup tool by navigating to the below url

https://setup.cloud.microsoft/entra/add-or-sync-users-to-microsoft-entra-id