--- title: "Enabling Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) SSO connections with OVHcloud" description: "Learn how to link your OVHcloud account to an external Active Directory." url: https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/account/account-information/sso-active-directory-federation-services lang: en --- > For AI agents: the complete documentation index is available at https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/llms.txt, the full documentation bundle is available at https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/llms-full.txt. # Enabling Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) SSO connections with OVHcloud **Learn how to link your OVHcloud account to an external Active Directory.** You can use **Single Sign-On** (SSO) to connect to your OVHcloud account. To enable these connections, your account and your Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) have to be using SAML (_Security Assertion Markup Language_) authentications.   ## Requirements - Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) running on your server - An [OVHcloud account](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/account/account-information/create-account.md) - Access to the [OVHcloud Control Panel](https://manager.us.ovhcloud.com/#/hub)   ## Instructions **Note:** For a service provider (i.e. your OVHcloud account) to perform an SSO connection with an identity provider (i.e. your AD FS), the essential part is to establish a mutual trust relationship. ### Establishing AD FS trust Your AD FS acts as your identity provider. Authentication requests by your OVHcloud account will only be accepted if it is declared a trusted party first. In the Active Directory context, this means adding it as `Relying Party Trust`. From your Server Manager, open the `Tools` menu and select `AD FS Management`. Click on `Relying Party Trusts`. Then click on `Add Relying Party Trust...`. Select `Claims aware` and confirm with the `Start` button. Here you can enter the relying party information manually or import it from a metadata file.   #### Importing the OVHcloud SP metadata Select `Import data about the relying party from a file` and select your metadata file. You can obtain the US region metadata file via the following link: [https://us.ovhcloud.com/auth/sso/saml/sp/metadata.xml](https://us.ovhcloud.com/auth/sso/saml/sp/metadata.xml) Then click the `Next` button. Enter a display name for the relying party and click the `Next` button. Click `Next` in the Access Control window. Click `Next` again to proceed. Click the `Close` button in the last window. The OVHcloud relying party trust is now added to your AD FS. **Note:** With OVHcloud added as a trusted relying party, you should be able to log in via an SSO connection already. However, any information about the user's identity (in terms of the SAML "assertion") will remain unavailable until you configure a policy to map Active Directory LDAP fields to the attributes in the SAML assertion.   #### Mapping LDAP attributes to SAML attributes Click on the OVHcloud relying party trust entry. Then click on `Edit Claim Issuance Policy...`. Click the `Add Rule...` button. Click `Next`. Enter a rule name, then define your mapping. Select `Active Directory` as **Attribute store**. **Note:** The following settings can be configured freely for the Active Directory LDAP data to be read correctly by the service provider. You can refer to the image below as an example. When you are done, click the `Finish` button. Click the `Apply` button and confirm with `OK`. With the mapping completed, your AD FS now trusts OVHcloud as a service provider. The next step is to ensure that the OVHcloud account trusts your AD FS as the identity provider. You can find your ADFS Federation Metadata file URL on the ADFS server through the ADFS Management in **AD FS > Tools > AD FS Management > Service > Endpoints** and go to the section **Metadata**. It should look like this: /FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml. In an internet browser other than Internet Explorer, go to https\://\.com\.  This URL is not exposed on the internet by default, so this has to be done from the Windows server directly.\ Once you are on the page, save the file on your hard drive by clicking on **File > Save** on your browser. Keep this file to set up your ADFS in the OVHcloud customer panel later. Do not use Internet Explorer; use Edge or Firefox.   ### Establishing OVHcloud account trust and configuring the connection Adding your AD FS as a trusted identity provider is done in the [OVHcloud Control Panel](https://manager.us.ovhcloud.com/#/hub) where you can provide the identity provider metadata. 1. Click your `name` and then your `initials`. 2. Select `Identity and Access Management (IAM)` from the left-hand menu. 3. Click the `Identities` tab to access local users management. Click on the `SSO connection` button. Fill in the XML metadata of your AD FS. Click on `Confirm`. **Note:** You can keep local users by ticking the `Keep active OVHcloud users` box. You should now see your AD FS as the identity provider, as well as the default groups. Click the link below `SSO service URL` to view more information on it. The _more options_ `...` button enables you to update or delete the SSO, and to see details. The trust of your AD FS as identity provider is thus established but you still have to add groups to your OVHcloud account. **Warning:** **NOTE:** If you try to connect at this stage via SSO, you will probably receive a `Not in valid groups` error message.\ \ That is because your OVHcloud account checks if the authenticating user belongs to a group that actually exists on the account. To resolve this, verify which information is mapped to the "Group" attribute that your AD FS returns. Consider the following example of the user "John Doe" from your Active Directory as shown in the image below. Next, check the mapping in AD FS. Scroll down to make sure that the values in the LDAP Attribute column align with the Outgoing Claim In this example, the "Group" attribute sent back by the Active Directory for the user "John Doe" is "title". This corresponds to the "job title" which is `manager@.com`. You can also verify this in the SAML assertion: ```xml manager@.com ... ``` This means that you need to add the `manager@.com` group to your OVHcloud account, attaching a role to it. Otherwise, your OVHcloud account wouldn't know what is the user allowed to do. Add it by clicking on the `Declare a group` button and filling in the fields:   You can then check that the group is added to your OVHcloud account in the `Groups` section: When you connect with the Active Directory user "johndoe" now, your OVHcloud account will recognize that the user has the "REGULAR" role, specified by its group. You can then disconnect from your account and log in again with your AD FS as the identity provider. **Warning:** **NOTE:** If you set the privileges to `NONE`, you will need to assign permissions to this group via the [IAM policies](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/account/account-information/use-iam-policies-console.md).   ### Connect via SSO On the [OVHcloud login page](https://auth.us.ovhcloud.com/signin/?action=disconnect\&onsuccess=https%3A%2F%2Fmanager.us.ovhcloud.com%2F%23%2Fhub), enter your [customer code](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/account/account-information/create-account.md#what-is-my-customer-code) followed by **/idp** without entering a password, and click the `Login` button. You are then redirected to your AD FS login page. Enter the login/password of a user of your LDAP Active Directory, then click the `Sign in` button. You are now logged in with the same customer code, but via your Active Directory user and using your AD FS SSO.   ## Go further Browse all the [Account information guides](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/account/account-information/landing-page-account-information.md). Browse the rest of the [OVHcloud US documentation](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/index.md) for guides on our other products and services.