Overview

updated for WIF RTM & Windows Azure SDK November 2009

This hands-on lab provides step-by-step guides for hosting in Windows Azure (WAZ) a Web application accepting identities from an external identity provider: with the authentication functions being performed by an external identity provider, you are now free to focus on the business function of your application instead of worrying of low level details. As you will learn while you go though the lab, this is easily accomplished by taking advantage of Windows Identity Foundation (WIF), formerly known as Geneva, for enhancing your web site or web service.

The current hands-on lab represents a substantial improvement in respect to the first release of the Windows Identity Foundation and Windows Azure Passive Federation guide. With the new features introduced by the RTM version of Windows identity Foundation and the latest release of Windows Azure, the sequence of instructions for enabling the scenario has been greatly simplified and all the workarounds that were necessary with the CTP bits are no longer needed. Note that this hands-on lab focuses on setting up the website, but does not really delve in the details of handling trust and lifecycle considerations in general. For a more in-depth discussion on the subject, please refer to this PDC09 session recording.




A summary of the steps followed by this HOL. You start by creating an ASP.NET website (RP) in a Windows Azure Web Role and an STS for it in the same Visual Studio solution and you establish trust between the two. Upon successful testing you publish & test the WebRole in staging and finally in production. The STS used at all stages is the one hosted by the local IIS: this is done to simplify the deployment of this guide on dev machines, but if you have a production STS available you can certainly use it in lieu of the test one.

We welcome your feedback! We will keep updating and integrating this document as the relevant technologies evolve. You can find more information here and here.