Federation Guides › Legacy Federation Guide › Overview of a SiteMinder Federation Setup

Overview of a SiteMinder Federation Setup

This section contains the following topics:

Federation Setup Overview

Conventions in the Installation Overview Procedures

Set Up Asserting Party Components

Set Up Relying Party Components

Federation Setup Overview

This overview outlines the setup of a federated network.

The steps in each procedure are divided by tasks by the party generating assertions and tasks by the party consuming assertions. Within this organization, the procedures are further divided by the Policy Server and Web Agent tasks at each site.

For general purposes, this guide uses the terms asserting party and relying party to identify sides of a federated relationship.

The party that generates assertions is referred to as the asserting party. The asserting party can be any of the following partners:

• SAML 1.x producer
• SAML 2.0 Identity Provider
• WS-Federation Account Partner

The party that consumes assertions for authentication purposes is referred to as the relying party. The relying party can be any of the following partners:

• SAML 1.x consumer
• SAML 2.0 Service Provider
• WS-Federation Resource Partner

Note: You can perform all the installation tasks first then complete the software configuration through the Administrative UI.

These procedures refer to the latest SiteMinder release. See the Platform Matrix for version information for a release.

To locate the Platform Support Matrix

1. Log on to the Technical Support Site.
2. Search for Platform Support Matrix.

Be aware of the following information:

• The product does not support federation between two systems using the same cookie domain.
• Legacy Federation is a separately licensed items from core SiteMinder.

Conventions in the Installation Overview Procedures

The following variables are used in installation and configuration procedures:

web_agent_home

Specifies the installed location of the Web Agent

policy_server_home

Specifies the installed location of the Policy Server

web_server_home

Indicates the installed location of the web server

fqhn

Designates fully qualified host name

port_number

Specifies the port number of a server

sps_home

Specifies the installed location of CA SiteMinder® SPS