DirSync (WAAD) Access Denied In Configuration Wizard

How to solve access denied error while configuring DirSync with the wizard?

I ran into the following issue while setting up DirSync (WAAD) tool.

I installed the latest DirSync tool and when running the configuration wizard, it asked for an Office365 and an on-premise admin account credentials and accepted both of them. The wizard got to the “Configuration” stage and ultimately error’d out with the “Access is denied” message. The only buttons available were “Retry” and “Cancel”.

There are two things to check to fix this issue.

As I was installing DirSync on the domain controller (yes, it is supported), I ran the configuration wizard straight after the install as prompted.

You should uncheck the box and click “Finish”. Then log off from the server and log back in. This ensures that only the least AD permissions are configured. The log off is only required if you install DirSync (WAAD) on a domain controller.

Second point to check is whether the on-premise AD account that you use in the configuration wizard is a member of the “FIMSyncAdmins” AD group. If not, add the user to the group, wait for the replication and run the wizard again.

And voila! ;)