On site (on-premises) or on Microsoft Cloud (Windows Azure)
Many businesses nowadays use Microsoft Office 365. Therefore, they have to manage:
- Users and groups in their active directory – users and groups inside AD on-premises.
- Users and groups in their Microsoft Office 365 directory – users and groups inside the cloud.
To make it easier for businesses to manage only one set of users and groups and to have the user log in once with one password businesses can leverage the Microsoft single sign-on for their own Microsoft Office 365.
Single sign-on works via federating business active directory with Microsoft Office 365 directory and synchronizing the users and groups between both directories by transferring all changes made on users and groups from the business active directory to Microsoft Office 365 directory along with users’ password therefore a user X can log into his domain network with his/her password which automatically logs him/her into Microsoft Office 365 without prompting for his/her user name and password.
To setup single sign-on with high availability feature businesses can deploy the federation service either on their site (on-premises) or on Microsoft Cloud (Windows Azure)
Deploying ADFS on site (on-premises) requires the followings:
- Acquiring 4 physical hardware servers where 2 of them providing the high availability federation service while the other 2 providing the high availability proxy federation service.
- Acquiring 4 Microsoft Windows Server licenses.
- Acquiring two Network load balancing devices or deploying Microsoft software NLB one for the federation service and the other for the proxy federation service.
While deploying ADFS on Microsoft Cloud (Windows Azure) requires the followings:
- Deploying two Microsoft Windows servers on Windows Azure with the availability set feature selected one server provides the federation service while the other one provides the proxy federation service.
- Acquiring a VPN device to connect users’ site to Microsoft Cloud Network (Windows Azure Virtual Network.)
With deploying ADFS on Microsoft Cloud servers’ resources (Processors & Memories) can be increased or decreased in few minutes without the hassle of purchasing and installing new hardware but increasing the resources will incur additional charges while decreasing them will lower the charges.
Obviously by comparing the two deployment options above we can tell that deploying ADFS on Microsoft Cloud is easier to implement, manage and cheaper than deploying ADFS on site (on-premises.)
Vorsite can provide your business with both deployment options but we strongly recommend you to have the second option.
