Cancel the Azure subscription completely but want to keep O365 access and Okta access active.

Question

Cancel the Azure subscription completely but want to keep O365 access and Okta access active.

Pradeep Kabbur 40

Customer want to cancel the Azure subscription completely but want to keep O365 access and Okta access active.

We have AD servers hosted as VM in azure and AD sync is also setup in the same location.

This is part of graceful shutdown of the platform as they are shutting and handovering to parent company.

High level steps to accomplish this will be great full. Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Pradeep Kabbur.

Accepted answer

2 additional answers

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Answer 1

Abiola Akinbade 24,895

Hello Pradeep Kabbur,

Thanks for your question.

M365 operates on a separate licensing model and is not directly tied to your Azure subscription. Canceling Azure will not affect your Microsoft 365 services. So basically all you need to consider is the below:

If your Azure subscription includes resources like VMs hosting AD services that synchronize with Entra, you need to plan for these dependencies.
Back up all data necessary before starting the process.
To cancel, see:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/cancel-azure-subscription

You can mark it 'Accept Answer' and 'Upvote' if this helped you

Regards,

Abiola

Pradeep Kabbur 40 Reputation points

2025-01-30T09:45:07.39+00:00

Yes, O365 is Azure indipendent. But I wanted make sure what are the things we have to check before cancelling.

Answer 2

Marti Peig 965 Microsoft Employee

Hi @Pradeep Kabbur ,

Just to complement Abiola's answer and document it. In Subscriptions, licenses, accounts, and tenants for Microsoft's cloud offerings we have documented the following...

A Microsoft Entra tenant is a specific instance of Microsoft Entra ID containing accounts and groups. Paid or trial subscriptions of Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 include a free Microsoft Entra tenant. This Microsoft Entra tenant does not include other Azure services and is not the same as an Azure trial or paid subscription.

I would suggest your customer to plan the migration of the Entra Connect Sync server to on-premises or consider moving to Cloud Sync depending on their requirements. I'm leaving a couple of links here:

As usual, if this answers your question, do click Accept Answer and Yes for what if this answer was helpful. And, if you have any further queries do let us know.

Marti

Kancharla Saiteja 1,820 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-01-31T08:19:07.7933333+00:00

Hi @Pradeep Kabbur ,

I am Saiteja from Q&A will be assisting you with your query.
Following up to see if the above answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know by responding in comments.
Pradeep Kabbur 40 Reputation points

2025-01-31T14:29:08.04+00:00

Hey, Thanks for the suggestion.

Here we are not setting up any new AD or ADsync as they are shutting down. We need to have the Exchange online for Email communication. at the same time we want to cancel AD and all onpremise or azure hosted VMs. keeping only Email active for communication with vendors and support.

Regards,

Pradeep Kabbur.

Answer 3

Hi @Pradeep Kabbur ,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A platform!

Depending on your needs, here are the high-level steps to cancel your Azure subscription while keeping Office 365 and Okta access active and ensuring a smooth transition of your AD servers:

Back up and prepare data

Make sure you back up all critical data in your Azure VMs and storage. This includes any data stored in Azure Storage, SQL Databases, and VM snapshots.
Export any necessary Active Directory data and configuration.

Migrate AD services

If the parent company has an existing AD environment, plan to migrate your AD services there. This may involve setting up a new VM in the parent company's infrastructure or using their existing AD servers.
Make sure AD sync is configured to the new environment. This may involve setting up Azure AD Connect in the new environment to sync with Office 365 and Okta.

Reconfigure Office 365 and Okta

Make sure Office 365 is configured to authenticate with the new AD environment. This may involve updating the Azure AD Connect configuration.
Update Okta to point to the new AD environment for user authentication and synchronization.

Shutdown and deactivate Azure resources

Stop all running services in Azure, including virtual machines, applications, and other resources.
Delete all resources and resource groups in the Azure subscription.
Navigate to the Azure portal, go to Cost Management + Billing, select the subscription, and click Cancel.

Final review and handover

Ensure that users can still access Office 365 and Okta using the new AD environment.
Perform a final backup of any remaining data before fully canceling the subscription.
Prepare and hand over all necessary documents to the parent company.

By following these steps, you can ensure a smooth transition and maintain access to critical services while shutting down your Azure subscription.

Please feel free to contact me for any updates.

Best,

Jake Zhang

Kancharla Saiteja 1,820 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-02-03T11:06:41.7933333+00:00

Hi @Pradeep Kabbur ,

Thank you for your response,

I see @Jake Zhang-MSFT has already provided most of the steps which covers in planning and migrating your resources from the subscription from your tenant before cancellation of the subscription. I would like to add few more points regarding the cancellation of subscription and keeping the O365 active for email communication.

If you have the users synced from on-premises to Azure, you need to convert the entire users from on-premises to Azure using this document. In the next 72 hours, all the users will become cloud users itself. Then you can decommission your servers and make all the users active in cloud. Once the users are in cloud then you can move to cancel and delete all the subscription using the following document.

Now, you can have the licenses based on your requirement for email communication itself. Please take a look on pricing for office 365 licensing here. This makes user active in cloud with exchange email communication active.

I hope this information is helpful. Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

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Cancel the Azure subscription completely but want to keep O365 access and Okta access active.

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