Can Shibboleth be integrated with Windows Azure Access Control Service?

Question

Two of our higher-ed clients use Shibboleth for SSO. I have zero experience with Shib, and do not have an instance to test with.

Ultimately we would like to integrate a Shib SSO with these clients in our Windows Azure (MVC) web role. So my questions are:

1. Is this possible?
2. If so, how? Do any settings need to be make on Shib, and what are they?

I spoke with Vittorio Bertocci last year at MIX 11 about this. He told me there is a checkbox called "WS-Federation" that can be enabled in Shib, which would enable compatibility. I've learned from out clients that WS-Fed is supported on the Service Provider but not the Identity Provider.

I will be more than happy to supplement this question with more details in response to comments.

Answer 1

On Azure side, you would use WIF which has extensions to implement SAML 2.0 protocol (apparently still in CTP). You would not use ACS in between in this case. Warning: there are some gotchas while using WIF with ASP.NET MVC

:-) Benjamin

Answer 2

If Azure supports SAML 2.0, then it will, more or less, interoperate with Shibboleth. If it only supports WS-Federation, then it won't for your purposes.