Joining new on-premises Windows 2019 Server to Azure AD

Question

I have a new on-premise server with a fresh Windows Server 2019 install. We have an existing Azure AD that our users use for Office 365 and to log in to their computers which are joined to the Azure. How can I join the server to Azure AD so that users are synced to the on premises server? Specifically, I'd like users to add network shares using their Azure credentials for authentication. I've googled and read through a lot of manuals and I'm trying to avoid creating users on the server and then manually syncing each to Azure. Is there a way to just import and sync the users from Azure to the server or only use Azure for authentication?

Server uses:

1. Local network storage (users would need to add shares as "network drives" using their user account info)
2. SQL Server for an local network programs

Also, moving these two services to the cloud is not currently an option.

Answer 1

You can join your Server as a Hybrid Azure AD join and there is no Azure AD join for servers. If you join your machine to Azure AD there is no option to sync the users from Cloud to server.

If you have on-premises environment and Azure AD. You can use a tool called Azure AD connect and sync the users from on-premises to Cloud. There is no direct tool to synchronize the users from Cloud to on-premises.

Hybrid Azure AD join where the machine is joined to both on-premises AD and Azure AD . Kindly check this link for Azure AD join.