Isn't the "C" in CAS for centralized?  I've never heard of a vendor bundling 
CAS with a product, which seems very odd to me.  The whole point is to 
centralize control, simplify the user experience (SSO, etc.), minimize attack 
vectors, and so on.  Satisfying a requirement like "each instance of the 
product should be able to function even if other instances are down" should be 
handled by some HA strategy, not by de-centralizing your centralized 
authentication service.  That's why so many lovely folks have spent so much 
effort developing and maintaing CAS clients and libraries, is it not? 

-Aaron

---------------------------------
Aaron Fuleki
Senior Web Architect
Denison University
740.587.5752
---------------------------------

On Nov 7, 2011, at 1:41 PM, [email protected] wrote:

> Thanks Marvin for suggesting various options. 
> 
> I will be interested in knowing more about the #1 option that you listed - 
> Shibboleth.
> Right now, Shibboleth is being considered as an option to achieve SSO between 
> our product and a third part product which does not use CAS.
> 
> #2 is an interesting option. I will explore more on this.
> 
> #3 - The problem with this approach is the requirement that "each instance of 
> the product should be able to function even if other instances are down".
> 
> Finally, is CAS clustering an option to consider for such a requirement? Or 
> is it supposed to be used only to provide HA?            
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marvin Addison [mailto:[email protected]] 
> Sent: Monday, November 07, 2011 11:53 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [cas-user] CAS Server Federation
> 
>> This is a product that we ship to customers. Customers can install multiple 
>> instances of this product in their environment to scale out.
> 
> Simply put: CAS is not a federated SSO product.  Your options:
> 
> - Implement federated SSO in CAS.  If Shibboleth is any indication
> the return on investment would be (profoundly) negative for your use
> case.
> - Creative hack where CAS instances trust one another based.  An
> authentication handler that could query another CAS server for
> authenticated state of a user comes to mind.
> - Simply change the way you distribute your product such that the CAS
> server component can be installed just once for N installations such
> that all share a single logical CAS instance.
> 
> Honestly the last option sounds like the best one.  Based on what
> you've shared, all installations should ideally share a single CAS
> server anyway.
> 
> M
> 
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