High availability federated authentication Phase 3: Configure AD FS servers

In this phase of deploying high availability for Microsoft 365 federated authentication in Azure infrastructure services, you create an internal load balancer and two AD FS servers.

You must complete this phase before moving on to Phase 4: Configure web application proxies. See Deploy high availability federated authentication for Microsoft 365 in Azure for all of the phases.

Create the AD FS server virtual machines in Azure

Use the following block of PowerShell commands to create the virtual machines for the two AD FS servers. This PowerShell command set uses values from the following tables:

• Table M, for your virtual machines

• Table R, for your resource groups

• Table V, for your virtual network settings

• Table S, for your subnets

• Table I, for your static IP addresses

• Table A, for your availability sets

Recall that you defined Table M in Phase 2: Configure domain controllers and Tables R, V, S, I, and A in Phase 1: Configure Azure.

First, you create an Azure internal load balancer for the two AD FS servers. Specify the values for the variables, removing the < and > characters. When you have supplied all the proper values, run the resulting block at the Azure PowerShell command prompt or in the PowerShell ISE.

# Set up key variables
$locName="<your Azure location>"
$vnetName="<Table V - Item 1 - Value column>"
$subnetName="<Table R - Item 2 - Subnet name column>"
$privIP="<Table I - Item 4 - Value column>"
$rgName=<Table R - Item 4 - Resource group name column>"

$vnet=Get-AzVirtualNetwork -Name $vnetName -ResourceGroupName $rgName
$subnet=Get-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -VirtualNetwork $vnet -Name $subnetName

$frontendIP=New-AzLoadBalancerFrontendIpConfig -Name "ADFSServers-LBFE" -PrivateIPAddress $privIP -Subnet $subnet
$beAddressPool=New-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressPoolConfig -Name "ADFSServers-LBBE"

$healthProbe=New-AzLoadBalancerProbeConfig -Name WebServersProbe -Protocol "TCP" -Port 443 -IntervalInSeconds 15 -ProbeCount 2
$lbrule=New-AzLoadBalancerRuleConfig -Name "HTTPSTraffic" -FrontendIpConfiguration $frontendIP -BackendAddressPool $beAddressPool -Probe $healthProbe -Protocol "TCP" -FrontendPort 443 -BackendPort 443
New-AzLoadBalancer -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Name "ADFSServers" -Location $locName -LoadBalancingRule $lbrule -BackendAddressPool $beAddressPool -Probe $healthProbe -FrontendIpConfiguration $frontendIP

Next, create the AD FS server virtual machines.

When you have supplied all the proper values, run the resulting block at the Azure PowerShell command prompt or in the PowerShell ISE.

# Set up variables common to both virtual machines
$locName="<your Azure location>"
$vnetName="<Table V - Item 1 - Value column>"
$subnetName="<Table R - Item 2 - Subnet name column>"
$avName="<Table A - Item 2 - Availability set name column>"
$rgNameTier="<Table R - Item 2 - Resource group name column>"
$rgNameInfra="<Table R - Item 4 - Resource group name column>"

$rgName=$rgNameInfra
$vnet=Get-AzVirtualNetwork -Name $vnetName -ResourceGroupName $rgName
$subnet=Get-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -VirtualNetwork $vnet -Name $subnetName
$backendSubnet=Get-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name $subnetName -VirtualNetwork $vnet
$webLB=Get-AzLoadBalancer -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Name "ADFSServers"

$rgName=$rgNameTier
$avSet=Get-AzAvailabilitySet -Name $avName -ResourceGroupName $rgName

# Create the first ADFS server virtual machine
$vmName="<Table M - Item 4 - Virtual machine name column>"
$vmSize="<Table M - Item 4 - Minimum size column>"
$staticIP="<Table I - Item 5 - Value column>"
$diskStorageType="<Table M - Item 4 - Storage type column>"

$nic=New-AzNetworkInterface -Name ($vmName +"-NIC") -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Location $locName -Subnet $backendSubnet -LoadBalancerBackendAddressPool $webLB.BackendAddressPools[0] -PrivateIpAddress $staticIP
$vm=New-AzVMConfig -VMName $vmName -VMSize $vmSize -AvailabilitySetId $avset.Id

$cred=Get-Credential -Message "Type the name and password of the local administrator account for the first AD FS server." 
$vm=Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -VM $vm -Windows -ComputerName $vmName -Credential $cred -ProvisionVMAgent -EnableAutoUpdate
$vm=Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vm -PublisherName MicrosoftWindowsServer -Offer WindowsServer -Skus 2016-Datacenter -Version "latest"
$vm=Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -VM $vm -Id $nic.Id
$vm=Set-AzVMOSDisk -VM $vm -Name ($vmName +"-OS") -DiskSizeInGB 128 -CreateOption FromImage -StorageAccountType $diskStorageType
New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Location $locName -VM $vm

# Create the second AD FS virtual machine
$vmName="<Table M - Item 5 - Virtual machine name column>"
$vmSize="<Table M - Item 5 - Minimum size column>"
$staticIP="<Table I - Item 6 - Value column>"
$diskStorageType="<Table M - Item 5 - Storage type column>"

$nic=New-AzNetworkInterface -Name ($vmName +"-NIC") -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Location $locName  -Subnet $backendSubnet -LoadBalancerBackendAddressPool $webLB.BackendAddressPools[0] -PrivateIpAddress $staticIP
$vm=New-AzVMConfig -VMName $vmName -VMSize $vmSize -AvailabilitySetId $avset.Id

$cred=Get-Credential -Message "Type the name and password of the local administrator account for the second AD FS server." 
$vm=Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -VM $vm -Windows -ComputerName $vmName -Credential $cred -ProvisionVMAgent -EnableAutoUpdate
$vm=Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vm -PublisherName MicrosoftWindowsServer -Offer WindowsServer -Skus 2016-Datacenter -Version "latest"
$vm=Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -VM $vm -Id $nic.Id
$vm=Set-AzVMOSDisk -VM $vm -Name ($vmName +"-OS") -DiskSizeInGB 128 -CreateOption FromImage -StorageAccountType $diskStorageType
New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Location $locName -VM $vm

For each virtual machine, use the remote desktop client of your choice and create a remote desktop connection. Use its intranet DNS or computer name and the credentials of the local administrator account.

For each virtual machine, join them to the appropriate Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain with these commands at the Windows PowerShell prompt.

$domName="<AD DS domain name to join, such as corp.contoso.com>"
$cred=Get-Credential -Message "Type the name and password of a domain account."
Add-Computer -DomainName $domName -Credential $cred
Restart-Computer

Here is the configuration resulting from the successful completion of this phase, with placeholder computer names.

Phase 3: The AD FS servers and internal load balancer for your high availability federated authentication infrastructure in Azure

Next step

Use Phase 4: Configure web application proxies to continue configuring this workload.

See Also

Deploy high availability federated authentication for Microsoft 365 in Azure

Federated identity for your Microsoft 365 dev/test environment