I understand that App Registration represents an app that might have UI for users to login.
I understand that a Service Principal is for applications like scheduled batch processing applications.
But from the technical perspective, in Azure Portal App Registration list, I can see both of them in the list and look the same.
Is there anything that an SP can do that an App Registration cannot or vice versa?
It is very confusing! And unfortunately the link juunas pointed to is not only confusing, it contains bad information! To further demonstrate how confusing it is, answers you have received here are also not exactly correct! It's a real mess, and Microsoft is not doing a great job bringing clarity to the subject.
AlfredoRevilla got really close. Unfortunately, he pointed to the same bad documentation as well, which does not add much clarity to the subject.
To start, an Enterprise Application is not a service principal. This can be easily demonstrated by creating a SP using CLI (az ad sp create). After creating a Service Principal this way, you will see the corresponding App Registration...but no "Enterprise Application" will appear. Again, to make things confusing, Microsoft decided to tack-on the ability to view Service Principals not associated with an application object in the Enterprise Apps blade. This is done by using the drop-down to display the misnomered "Application Types" (not to digress too much here, but "Application Type == Managed Identity" is a clear example of how poorly this drop-down is named). More on this later.
So, to your question. Yes! There is something App Registrations can do that SP's can't do, and vice versa. They are actually different object types, just object types that look and seem to be used the same (now that isn't confusing at all, is it??? Way to go Microsoft.)
Unfortunately, I'm going to end up giving an answer that also is not quite satisfying from a technical perspective. I do this only in attempt to make some sort of sensical answer to a very confusing situation...and to avoid digressing into things like multitenancy applications and redirect URLs.
A Service Principal is the identity object in Azure Active Directory that allows roles to be assigned to various objects (resources). Thus the SP can be assigned as a Storage Blob Data Reader, or as a Key Vault Secrets User. Notice how I intentionally avoided using a web API as an example there? I did that on purpose, because Microsoft only wants to talk about this subject in context of API's and applications...bringing little clarity to the subject for non-API use cases. A key concept here is that a Service Principal will be created in your AAD whenever you create an App Registration or register an existing Application object (say from the marketplace or another tenant).
Creating an App Registration is going to essentially define the application itself. It is the view into the Application object. The Registration instantiates the application, defines who can access it (single tenant/multi-tenant), and defines various elements needed for token exchange, branding elements, etc.
But what about that "Enterprise Application" thing? What is it, and why is it tightly tied to the subject of Service Principals? You will find information that mistakenly implies an Enterprise Application is exactly the same as a Service Principal / is a Service Principal. But as pointed out above, a little experimentation in Azure quickly reveals this is not quite the case. Fortunately, it is easy to sort this part out by recognizing there is no such thing as an "Enterprise Application" Azure! Seriously, they do not exist. Microsoft created a blade in the Azure Portal that they named "Enterprise Applications" -- very poor name choice. What this blade does is provide a view to the Service Principal objects in Azure (be it a Service Principal for an Application object, or a Managed Identity Service Principal). That's it! So when you see that "Enterprise Applications" blade, just think "Service Principal identities" and don't get fooled into thinking there is another piece of this puzzle to figure out.
The App registration is the template used to create the SP. The SP is a security principal (like a User) which can be authenticated and authorized. Follow juunas link, specially Relationship between application objects and service principals.
The App Registrations view shows Azure AD Applications, which are identified by its Application ID, while Enterprise Applications view displays Service Principals. You can navigate from the Application to its associated Service Principal using the link labeled with Managed application in local directory in the Application Overview.
Application and Service Principal are associated by the Application ID. Often they have the same name, but they differ in its Object ID.
Please check the mentioned documentation for the purpose of Applications and Service Principals.
Related
I need Azure AD users to be synced into my application, so I've been researching how to implement SCIM and configure Azure AD to work with it. My end goal is to have my application listed as the ones here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/active-directory/saas-apps/tutorial-list, and to do this, it should support SSO + User provisioning.
The implementation is kind of straightforward as SCIM is a standard and I just need to implement a bunch of APIs complying with a specific contract, so this should work.
The problem I'm having, though, is I cannot find how to enable the "Provisioning" feature for my application. I've been reading the articles and watching the videos Microsoft provided (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/active-directory/app-provisioning/configure-automatic-user-provisioning-portal for instance) and it seems that when I click the Provisioning section in my app, I should be able to configure it. Unfortunately, I don't see the UI shown in the tutorials, so I suppose I've been missing some step that is not explained in the docs. Also, I'd expect to have somewhere to configure the base URL that should contain all endpoints required for the SCIM standard. I don't see this either, which confirms my feeling I'm missing something essential.
Here are the steps I've been taking:
Open the Azure portal
Create an enterprise app - Click on Enterprise applications, Create your own application, and Integrate any other application you don't find in the gallery (Non-gallery)
Once the application gets created, I can't see anything in the "Provisioning" settings
I found a solution to the problem I've described above. Unfortunately, I somehow the big blue "Get Started" button in the middle of the screen. When you click this button, the configuration I've been looking for appears and it is all good.
There are various tasks that a web back end developer has to do while doing a project while making APIs in specific. For example setting up authorizations for various roles, setting up a push notification server(mobile applications) etc. I just wanted to know a few more.
It depends on what kind of freedom the developer has. If the path structure is not explicitly described in the technical task, then first of all the developer creates the basic structure of the server. Then it determines whether user authorization is required to access the requests. If authorization is required then what type it would be. Ofcourse, creating connection to database.
You need to describe more clearly your question to get more clear answer. It really depends on the purposes and type of server (HTTP server, Media server, e.t.c)
Im reading this google doc on how to hook up app engine to a custom domain (a domain I purchased through a different registrar)
I get to a point where I have to "Supply the domain name ("example.com") and click Verify. This opens up a new tab titled Webmaster Central." and walk through some prompts to prove I own the domain.
After doing this "domain verification is automatically re-confirmed about every 30 days".
What exactly is "domain verification"? Is there like a domain verification protocol that all DNS registrars must support? What communication is happening between google and say godady or AWS (route53)? Is there a special type of DNS record specifically for verification?
I don't understand whats actually happening to prove I own the domain and if this process is standardized or each DNS provider has their own solution/quirks for doing this.
From Verify your site ownership (also accessible via the Webmaster Central help menu):
What is verification?
Verification is the process of proving that you own the site or app
that you claim to own. We need to confirm ownership because once you
are verified for a site or app you have access to its private Google
Search data, and can affect how Google Search crawls it.
No, it's not a standard. Each hosting provider asking for it had their own method/algorithm of doing it.
Google actually has several such optional methods so that you can choose one that best works for your case. They're listed in the Verification methods chapter further down in the above-mentioned doc, together with some explanation of how each of them operates. Not all of them are based on DNS registrar actions.
Also keep in mind that Webmaster Central is used for other sites as well, not only for GAE-based sites - just in case some things might not make sense in a GAE context. This includes sites not even hosted on/using Google infrastructure/services.
I've created a website within the company that utilizes our active directory server to authenticate. I am concerned about security surrounding setting up relying parties with "localhost" domains.
I've pretty much followed this guide on setup. You'll notice about halfway down the page, there is a step to set up the development environment, localhost:44336 as a relying party.
I am concerned that someone could easily get the location of our federation metadata document, and simply roll their own project utilizing the same port and get access to our active directory. Is this a valid concern, or am I worrying over nothing? What would be a better alternative to having to use localhost in this configuration?
Yes it's safe. The metadata document only describes information about endpoints and about the token that active directory is issuing. It doesn't inherently have anything sensitive about it.
The actual authentication is still going to be handled by AD and unless the curious user already has a way to successfully authenticate against your AD then it's rather useless for him to hookup into that document.
Could they potentially create an app that uses your authentication protocol? Sure, but what would be the point if nobody can actually authenticate against it. Allowing this sort of behavior to happen is one of the points of ADFS.
Yesterday I got a call from a Microsoft representative asking if we supply "hosted solutions", presumably as part of the big Windows Azure push. As soon as I got off that call, our marketing director came into my office and said the majority of our customers are demanding Active Directory integration in the next version. Then it occurred to me: how does one use Active Directory in a "hosted solution" if the application does not live on the customer's network?
As a more general question about Active Directory integration, what kind of functional changes does that usually imply for an app? Does it mean a user is signed into the app just by authenticating to Active Directory or does it mean the app gets its list of users from Active Directory or does the creation of new users or groups in the app create new users or groups in Active Directory?
Am I just caught in the crossfire of a war of buzzwords?
You're not. Active Directory can be run across the public Internet, though this complicates the security and setup of the network rather considerably.
Generally, authenticating an app against Active Directory means that your membership provider (for example) would call into Active Directory to do the authentication and, after that, the user is simply logged in; you don't keep active credentials, etc, in your own database. However I would consider it smart to cache that information as well, and be prepared to authenticate against that cache in addition to the directory, in case the domain controller is unavailable for authentication (an especially large risk if you're running the directory across the Internet).
You can use Active Directory Federated Services to enable authentication using AD over the internet between two organizations. See: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc786469.aspx
I've never used it only read about it. Hope it helps.
The accepted answer explains the role of Active Directory and I agree that caching basic user information may be useful in many instances.
Active Directory can be expanded outside of a corporate network, to the internet and connected web services. As another user mentioned, this is achieved through ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) which allows "trusted" connections to be set up between separate authentication services. There were a number of scenarios explained as part of the "Office 365 Jump Start" webinars:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/office-365-jump-start-04-microsoft-office-365-identity-and-access-solutions
After viewing these, I immediately thought that a "hosted" AD and ADFS service would be useful, where a customer doesn't want to maintain the AD servers internally (Microsoft don't recommend running less than 5 seperate servers if you're doing this!) Recently, Microsoft have also launched their Azure cloud platform. One of the services they provide is labelled "Identity" which you can see here:
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/identity/
This is Microsoft's own solution to hosted AD services. In fact, they even mention using their "Identity" hosted service as a solution for SSO (Single Sign-On) for Office 356 and even Google web apps.
I am still learning about AD and Microsoft's cloud offerings, but I hope this points you in the right direction.
There's an article here: http://www.developerfusion.com/article/121561/integrating-active-directory-into-azure/ which describes in-depth how to integrate Active Directory with Azure - hope that helps.
Active Directory can be run across the public internet but you will experience lag times which may cause your app to time out or crash depending on your bandwidth. In the past, I have setup accounts with another company called ultradns.com who specializes in these types of scenarios. hope that helps.
You'd be best off going with a true hosting framework if you would like any support from MS.
I'm sure you'd like some links so:
HMC (Hosted Messaging and Collaboration)
The ONLY true blog I know about on the framework is from Kip Ng
The ASP.NET forums are a good resource for questions on the Framework as well.
An example of the work that goes into configuring AD for Exchange multitenancy is here, though it is based on an older version of the framework a lot of the same principles apply.
Also, try searching on the keyword multitenancy for some articles.