Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator AssociateImplement an identity management solutionMedium
A company is using Azure AD Connect with Pass-through Authentication (PTA) to allow users to sign in using their on-premises credentials. To ensure high availability and resilience for authentication, they need to deploy additional PTA agents. How many additional Pass-through Authentication agents should they deploy at a minimum to achieve high availability, assuming they already have one agent running?
- AOne, for a total of two agents.
- BZero, one agent is sufficient for high availability.
- CTwo, for a total of three agents.
- DThree, for a total of four agents.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. One, for a total of two agents.
For high availability with Pass-through Authentication, Microsoft recommends at least two PTA agents. If one agent becomes unavailable, the other agent can continue to process authentication requests, ensuring that users can still sign in.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. One agent represents a single point of failure and does not provide high availability.
- C. While three agents would provide even greater redundancy, the question asks for the 'minimum' for high availability.
- D. Four agents provide significant redundancy but are beyond the 'minimum' for high availability.
PTA Agent High Availability
To ensure continuous user authentication with Pass-through Authentication, multiple PTA agents should be deployed for redundancy.
- Minimum of two agents recommended for high availability.
- Agents are stateless and can be deployed on standard servers.
- Azure AD automatically distributes authentication requests among available agents.
Memory trick: Two PTA agents are better than one, for when the first one's fun is done.