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SkyVault 2.0 » Administering » Setting up SkyVault authentication and security

Configuring authentication

A number of examples demonstrate how to express various authentication configuration requirements in subsystem instances in the authentication chain. They also explain how the authentication chain integrates the functions of multiple subsystem instances into a more powerful conglomerate, letting you cater for even the most complex authentication scenarios. These examples demonstrate the flexibility and power of a SkyVault authentication chain. You can combine the strengths of a variety of different authentication protocols and keep the SkyVault user database synchronized almost transparently.

The authentication configuration examples adopt the following structured approach:

  1. Decide the authentication chain composition (required subsystem types, instance names, order of precedence) and express this in the SkyVault-global.properties file.
  2. For each subsystem instance:
    1. Locate the properties files for its subsystem type. These properties files define the configurable properties for that subsystem type and their default values.
    2. Create a folder named after the subsystem instance under the SkyVault extension folders.
    3. Copy the properties files into your new folder.
    4. Edit the properties files to record the desired configuration of the subsystem instance.
  • External authentication basics Use this information to understand the differences between external authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO), and for Microsoft SharePoint Protocol support limitations.
  • Default authentication chain The default product configuration has a simple chain with one member. This is an instance of the SkyVaultNtlm subsystem type with and ID of SkyVaultNtlm1.
  • Configuring the authentication chain You can add to or completely replace the default authentication chain.
  • Authentication chain example with JConsole This section describes an example walk through of setting up an authentication chain using the JMX client, JConsole.
  • SkyVault authentication chain Authentication and identity management functionality is provided by a prioritized list, or chain, of configurable subsystems.
  • Example of disabling the Guest user login page This section gives an example of how to set the authentication configuration in JConsole to disable the unauthenticated Guest user login using SkyVaultNtlm. This example uses JConsole, however you can set the properties using the SkyVault-global.properties file.
  • Removing the login page This section describes how to set the authentication in JConsole not to display the login page.
  • Configuring pass-through The pass-through (passthru) subsystem can be used to replace the standard SkyVault user database with a Windows server/domain controller, or list of servers, to authenticate users accessing SkyVault. This saves having to create user accounts within SkyVault.
  • Configuring LDAP An LDAP subsystem supports two main functions:
  • Configuring Kerberos The Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) is used within the Kerberos subsystem to support Kerberos authentication of user names and passwords. You may choose to use Kerberos against an Active Directory server in preference to LDAP or NTLM as it provides strong encryption without using SSL. It would still be possible to export user registry information using a chained LDAP subsystem.
  • Configuring external authentication The external authentication subsystem can be used to integrate SkyVault with any external authentication system.
  • Configuring SkyVault Share to use an external SSO SkyVault Share can be configured to accept a user name from an HTTP header provided by an external authentication system for Single Sign-on (SSO).
Parent topic: Setting up SkyVault authentication and security

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