ApacheCon: Core Europe 2015

Successful Web applications get deployed in multiple different scenarios. In the large-scale setups, user identities can no longer be expected to be stored primarily in htpasswd files or even in local relational database. Instead, users from remote directory servers and identity management systems like FreeIPA or Active Directory and users authenticated and authorized via SAML can access the application. Admins then search for ways to support these external identities in their organizations or across organizations even if the application that they deploy has no or limited support for non-local users. We will look at setups using Apache HTTP Server modules mod_authnz_pam and mod_auth_mellon and explore how they can be configured to offload authentication and authorization decisions to external identity sources, often even not centralized ones.