Wednesday, November 20, 2013

ADFS in O365 in a Nutshell

When it comes to O365 deployment Identity and Access Management plays a vital role and once the Organization decided for moving it's resources to cloud and also wants to have a seamless sign in experience on both On premise and Cloud which we termed as Single Sign On (SSO) , then your Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is the backbone for making this possible, I already wrote a post on O365 SSO Content road map where all the required components for establishing a successful SSO setup with O365 is written and explained by Microsoft and this is second one in the series which covers some vital part over ADFS in detail and puts things in a nutshell.


As usual I am not going to write the whole story as these topics were widely covered by Microsoft and Renowned MVPs and Experts in an excellent manner and I am pointing you today to a high level Technical documentation and also to a presentation on Exchange 2013 Hybrid deployment which typically explains about what you need to prepare yourself for a successful O365 Hybrid environment and most vital part it will clearly explain you each aspect and also shows you how the authentication happens with ADFS, while your clients are attempting to connect to O365 inclusive of Active and Passive authentication mechanisms and other vital components like Dirsync etc. which gives you a rich experience on understanding how authentication works in O365 with ADFS.

Let's get started.

Technical Documentation from Message Ops : ADFS Deployment Considerations for Office 365

Presentation from IT/Dev Connections by O365 MVP Jethro Seghers

Download here : Preparing for an Exchange 2013 Hybrid

For ease of understanding things read this Excellent post from Mads Sorensen Blog

How Does ADFS Work With Office 365?

Additionally, read this below quick guide to know how ADFS can be utilized to enable SSO with Office 365 explained by MVP Greg Shields.

Geek of All Trades: Office 365 SSO: A Simplified Installation Guide

Along with this Topic you need to know the role of ADFS proxy server, what it is used for and understand how it should be deployed,  its benefits etc. explained clearly in the below TechNet blog

Check here: Understanding the AD FS 2.0 Proxy

Additionally, Some Organizations don't want to spend cost on deploying ADFS proxy and will publish ADFS using the TMG Server which is also supported but it still has some limitations and complications.

Below is a walkthrough post from C7 Solutions blog from Publishing ADFS Through ISA or TMG Server on publishing ADFS using TMG for Office 365

Publishing ADFS Through ISA or TMG Server

Once you are clear with the ADFS Server and ADFS Proxy and their role in implementing SSO with the help of above blog posts and reference articles, Its time for you to advance the next level.

Download and read the below WhitePaper for successfully implementing SSO for Office 365 with ADFS 2.0

Office 365 Single Sign-On with ADFS 2.0 whitepaper

Read the below TechNet blog post covering various other vital aspects of ADFS for your deep dive experience.

ADFS High Availability – Quick Reference Guide for Administrators. Implement Single sign-on for Office 365.


Finally, Review this below ADFS Deep Dive Primer from PFE Blog covers everything in a nutshell.


ADFS Deep-Dive: Primer

Update: Various enhancements were made in the ADFS deployment with the next release ADFS 3.0 and I have written a post on the same with various vital references, once you review these information above and understand things navigate to the below blog post to know more on the present and future Road-map with ADFS.

Check here: ADFS 3.0 with Office 365

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