Windows Azure Active Directory Sync (“DirSync”) and Microsoft Azure Active Directory Sync (“Azure AD Sync”) are announced as deprecated
Azure AD Connect is the best way to connect your on-premises directory with Azure AD and Office 365. This is a great time to upgrade to Azure AD Connect from Windows Azure Active Directory Sync (DirSync) or Azure AD Sync as these tools are now deprecated and will reach end of support on April 13, 2017.
To be able to continue to synchronize your on-premises identity data to Azure AD and Office 365, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to Azure AD Connect.
If you are running DirSync there are two ways you can upgrade: In-place upgrade and parallel deployment. An in-place upgrade is recommended for most customers and if you have a recent operating system and less than 50,000 objects. In other cases it is recommended to do a parallel deployment where your DirSync configuration is moved to a new server running Azure AD Connect.
If you use Azure AD Sync an in-place upgrade is recommended. If you want to, it is possible to install a new Azure AD Connect server in parallel and do a swing migration from your Azure AD Sync server to Azure AD Connect.
For more info & upgrade paths:
https://azure.microsoft.com/it-it/documentation/articles/active-directory-aadconnect-dirsync-deprecated/?WT.mc_id=DirSyncDepAzureMail%2Cazurebg_email_Trans_1086_Active_Directory_DirSync_and_AAD_Sync_Deprecation