In order to implement Federated Sign-on between a (potentially more than one) customer with ADFS and my web application, I understand that I need ADFS installed in my environment.
If I were to do this (and install Active Directory) I can't see that I would ever need the Active Directory, as auth will be deligated to the customers AD through ADFS.
so...
Do i need to install Active Directory in my application environment? And\Or Is there an alternative to doing so?
Yes, you need Active Directory for Adfs as it doesn't provide any other identity providers out of the box.
If you comment out all the Identity methods in the web.config for ADFS, you get ADFS acting as a broker i.e. has no credential store of its own. So it would not require AD.
However, I am not sure what happens when you try and install ADFS since it binds with the domain AD at that point. Not sure what the effect what be if there is no AD to be found.
You could always install AD and then essentially ignore it.
