Forum Discussion
Solved
ADFS vs Azure AD for SSO
Hi there Bit of a newbie question but what is the difference between using Azure AD and ADFS as a SAML identity provider? We have on-premises AD and ADFS servers and a federation with Azure A...
If you are looking at them purely as SAML providers they are roughly equivalent. But there is more to federation than just SAML. There are other protocols and profiles that AAD can support that ADFS cannot. Remember that ADFS is a shipped product, it ships with the version of Windows and its capabilities stay roughly the same for its lifetime. It might get an upgrade in a big service pack. So ADFS on Server 2012 R2 has pretty much the same capabilities for the last 5 years. The new ADFS on 2016 has more, but it is subject to the same static life. Azure AD is constantly upgrading.
So strategically, if you don't mind putting your eggs in Microsoft's basket, AAD seems the better choice from that standpoint.
However, you have to measure your organization's willingness to rely on a cloud service versus on premises servers and network infrastructure you control.
Beyond that, AAD does much more than federation. You can use it to present a portal to your users, to secure groups of apps, to run analytics on your authentications for security, it can serve as an authentication backbone between other tenants, clients and consumers.
So you asked a complicated question, but the answer is probably AAD unless you aren't comfortable with the lack of control on the cloud service.
Josh Villagomez
Microsoft
MicrosoftHello Neil,
All of this feedback is fantastic. I would also like to add a few more things to think about. AD FS will authenticate your cloud or synchronized identities on premises. Many large organizations prefer this federated model because they are authenticating "in-house". With a synchronized solution , Microsoft would be authentication your users. You synchronize your users using AAD Connect and also enable password synchronization. This would mean that we would send your password hashes to your AAD. This is, of course, a very secure solution given that the hashes are hashed and salted, and then some. Nevertheless, you get the point. This being said, smaller organization are choosing AAD Connect Pass-Through-Authentication over ADFS for simplicity sake. PTA can authenticate your users on premises without the IT overhead of a complex ADFS farm. If your cloud application are Office 365 and some Azure Gallery apps, PTA may be a viable alternative. Of course, AD FS is a robust authentication solution with a large portfolio of authentication mechanisms such as FBA/CBA, Claims, oAuth, etc. I hope this helps. - Josh
This is a fantastic conversation people. I almost always guide my customer to utilising AAD with PTA unless there's specific on-premises services or software that necessitates the need for ADFS. Then utilise Enterprise Applications with the additional capabilities already mentioned such as provisioning capabilities.
We have used PTA mode for a while (started with preview even), until one day it just stopped working. Switched to Password Synchronization and it worked. Haven't figured out what happened with PTA (it was after usual Windows updates, so maybe some fix affected something). But even with PTA working you have to keep server with AD Connect running 24/7, as without it logins would be impossible. This server becomes a critical breaking point of your cloud services.
Also, this was an old reply, but i will mention anyway. One can still have SSO on domain joined Windows 7 PCs, using Seamless Single Sign On option of AD Connect.
