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Configure VMWare Cloud Director Single Sign-On SSO

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Configure VMWare Cloud Director SSO in a few simple steps using this setup guide. miniOrange Single Sign-On (SSO) helps you to log in to VMWare Cloud Director and other applications using a single set of credentials. Upon enabling SSO for VMWare Cloud Director, a person can securely access VMWare Cloud Director in one click without having to enter their username and password again.

With miniOrange VMWare Cloud Director SSO, you can:

• Enable your users to automatically login to VMWare Cloud Director
• Have centralized and easy access control of the users
• Connect easily with any external identity source like Azure AD, ADFS, Cognito, etc

miniOrange VMWare Cloud Director Single Sign-On (SSO) supports the following features:

• SP (Service Provider) Initiated Single Sign-On (SSO):
  In this flow, a person tries to login to the service provider (VMWare Cloud Director account) directly. The request is redirected to the identity provider for authentication. On successful authentication from the identity provider, the person is given access to the application (VMWare Cloud Director account).
• IdP (Identity Provider) Initiated Single Sign-On (SSO):
  In this flow, a person logs in to the identity provider using his credentials. Now the person can access any of the configured service providers (VMWare Cloud Director account, etc.) through the identity provider dashboard without having to enter the credentials again.
• Just In Time Provisioning:
  This will automate user account creation and pass information in your applications through identity provider. So, when a new user tries to log in to an authorized app for the first time, they trigger the flow of information from the identity provider to the app that's needed to create their account.

Follow the step-by-step guide to setup VMWare Cloud Director Single Sign-On (SSO)

• Go to the Admin console of VMWare, navigate to Administration.
• From the left panel, click in SAML, this will open the SAML configuration page.



• Click on Edit, this will open a pop-up window with all the configuration options.
• Under the Service Provider tab,
• Click on the Retrieve Metadata link to download the SP metadata. This file will be used for configuration at miniOrange in Step 2.
• Enter the metadata URL as Entity ID under the Entity ID field.

1. Configure VMWare Cloud Director in miniOrange

• Login into miniOrange Admin Console.
• Go to Apps and click on Add Application button.



• In Choose Application, select SAML/WS-FED from the application type dropdown.



• Search for VMWare Cloud Director in the list, if you don't find VMWare Cloud Director in the list then, search for custom and you can set up your application in Custom SAML App.

• On the top right of the page, click on Import SP Metadata button,
• Enter the app name
• Choose File from the set of radio buttons.
• Upload the metadata file that we downloaded in Step 1. This will populate the SAML required fields.



• Click on Next to proceed further.
• Under the Attribute Mapping tab, update the Name ID field to Username and click on save.



• To upload respective app logo for a Custom SAML App, click on Upload Logo tab.



• Click on Save.

To get miniOrange metadata details in order to configure VMWare Cloud Director:

• Go to Apps >> Manage Apps.
• Search for your app and click on the select in action menu against your app.
• Click on the Metadata Option under the Select Dropdown to get the miniOrange Metadata details. You can also click on the Show SSO Link to see the IdP initiated SSO link for VMWare Cloud Director.



• Here, click on Show Metadata Details button, this will open the metadata details, click on Download Metadata button to download the IDP metadata file. This fill will be uploaded at VCD.

2. Configure SSO in VMWare Cloud Director

• Now, go to VCD Admin dashboard again, and under the SAML configuration, go to Identity Provider tab.



• Toggle the Use SAML Identity Provider toggle button to enable SAML support for VCD.
• Upload the miniOrange IDP metadata file that we downloaded at the end of step 1 and click on Save button.
• From the left panel of the VCD portal, click on Users and then click on Import Users.



• In the popup, enter the username of the user that is present at miniOrange, assign a role and then click on Save. This will import the user to VCD.



• Now, as you try to login into VCD, it will show a SSO button. Click on it to initiate SSO.



• This will redirect the user to miniOrange Login page. Enter the user and password.





• After successful authentication, the user will be logged into VCD.

3. Enabling MFA at miniOrange

• Go to the miniOrange Admin dashboard. At the left panel of the page, click on Policies and then click on App Login Policy.



• Click on Edit under Action of the app that we configured. This will open the policy configuration.



• Toggle Enable 2-Factor Authentication (MFA) to enable MFA for the app and click on the Save button to save the configuration.



• Now, when trying to perform SSO, users will be prompted to verify the default MFA(OTP over email) configured by Admin.



• Note: Email gateway needs to be configured in order to send OTP over email.

4. Configure Your User Directory (Optional)

miniOrange provides user authentication from various external sources, which can be Directories (like ADFS, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, OpenLDAP, Google, AWS Cognito etc), Identity Providers (like Okta, Shibboleth, Ping, OneLogin, KeyCloak), Databases (like MySQL, Maria DB, PostgreSQL) and many more. You can configure your existing directory/user store or add users in miniOrange.

• Setup miniOrange as IDP
• Setup AD as User Directory
• Setup External IDP

• To add your users in miniOrange there are 2 ways:

1. Create User in miniOrange

2. Bulk Upload Users

1. Create User in miniOrange

• Click on Users >> User List >> Add User.



• Here, fill the user details without the password and then click on the Create User button.



• After successful user creation a notification message "An end user is added successfully" will be displayed at the top of the dashboard.



• Click on Onboarding Status tab. Check the email, with the registered e-mail id and select action Send Activation Mail with Password Reset Link from Select Action dropdown list and then click on Apply button.



• Now, Open your email id. Open the mail you get from miniOrange and then click on the link to set your account password.
• On the next screen, enter the password and confirm password and then click on the Single Sign-On (SSO) reset password button.



• Now, you can log in into miniOrange account by entering your credentials.

2. Bulk Upload Users in miniOrange via Uploading CSV File.

• Navigate to Users >> User List. Click on Add User button.



• In Bulk User Registration Download sample csv format from our console and edit this csv file according to the instructions.



• To bulk upload users, choose the file make sure it is in comma separated .csv file format then click on Upload.



• After uploading the csv file successfully, you will see a success message with a link.
• Click on that link you will see list of users to send activation mail. Select users to send activation mail and click on Send Activation Mail. An activation mail will be sent to the selected users.

• Click on External Directories >> Add Directory in the left menu of the dashboard.



• Select Directory type as AD/LDAP.



• STORE LDAP CONFIGURATION IN MINIORANGE: Choose this option if you want to keep your configuration in miniOrange. If the active directory is behind a firewall, you will need to open the firewall to allow incoming requests to your AD.
• STORE LDAP CONFIGURATION ON PREMISE: Choose this option if you want to keep your configuration in your premise and only allow access to AD inside premises. You will have to download and install miniOrange gateway on your premise.




• Enter LDAP Display Name and LDAP Identifier name.
• Select Directory Type as Active Directory.
• Enter the LDAP Server URL or IP Address against the LDAP Server URL field.
• Click on the Test Connection button to verify if you have made a successful connection with your LDAP server.



• In Active Directory, go to the properties of user containers/OU's and search for the Distinguished Name attribute. The bind account should have minimum required read privileges in Active Directory to allow directory lookups. If the use case involves provisioning (such as creating, updating, or deleting users or groups), the account must also be granted appropriate write permissions.



• Enter the valid Bind account Password.
• Click on the Test Bind Account Credentials button to verify your LDAP Bind credentials for LDAP connection.



• Search Base is the location in the directory where the search for a user begins. You will get this from the same place you got your Distinguished name.



• Select a suitable Search filter from the drop-down menu. If you use User in Single Group Filter or User in Multiple Group Filter, replace the <group-dn> in the search filter with the distinguished name of the group in which your users are present. To use custom Search Filter select "Write your Custom Filter" option and customize it accordingly.



• Click on the Next button, or go to the Authentication tab.
• You can also configure following options while setting up AD. Enable Activate LDAP in order to authenticate users from AD/LDAP. Click on the Next button to add user store.




Here's the list of the attributes and what it does when we enable it. You can enable/disable accordingly.

Attribute	Description
Activate LDAP	All user authentications will be done with LDAP credentials if you Activate it
Fallback Authentication	If LDAP credentials fail then user will be authenticated through miniOrange
Enable administrator login	On enabling this, your miniOrange Administrator login authenticates using your LDAP server
Show IdP to users	If you enable this option, this IdP will be visible to users
Sync users in miniOrange	Users will be created in miniOrange after authentication with LDAP

• Click on the Next button, or go to the Provisioning tab.

User Import and Provisioning from AD

• If you want to set up provisioning, click here for detailed information. For now, we are skipping this step by clicking Skip on Provisioning.

Attributes Mapping from AD

• By default userName, firstName, lastName, email are configured. Scroll down and click on Save Configurations. To fetch additional attributes from Active Directory, enable Send Configured Attributes. On the left side, enter the name that you wish to release to the applications. On the right side, enter the attribute name from Active Directory. E.g., if you wish to fetch company attribute from Active Directory, and send it as organization to configured applications, enter the following:

  Attribute Name sent to SP = organization
  Attribute Name from IDP = company

Test Connections

• You will see a list of directories in External Directories. Go to the directory you have configured, click Select, then go to Test Connections and click on it.



• Click on Test Connection to check whether you have enter valid details. For that, it will ask for username and password.



• On Successful connection with LDAP Server, a success message is shown.

Test Attribute Mapping

• You will see a list of directories in External Directories. Go to the directory you have configured, click Select, then go to Test Attribute Mapping and click on it.



• A pop-up will appear to add the username. After clicking Test, you will see the Test Attribute Mapping Result.

Set up AD as External Directory configuration is complete.

Note: Refer our guide to setup LDAP on windows server.

miniOrange integrates with various external user sources such as directories, identity providers, and etc.

• Okta
• ADFS
• Ping
• AWS Cognito
• Many more

Not able to find your IdP or Need help setting it up?

Contact us or email us at idpsupport@xecurify.com and we'll help you setting it up in no time.

Troubleshooting

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

External References

• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• All Identity Solutions
• Know more about cloud SSO