Design of an SSO authentication infrastructure for heterogeneous inter-cloud environments

This paper outlines the design of an authentication infrastructure for linking distributed heterogeneous cloud systems managed by different cloud management middleware to enable them to interoperate as an integrated inter-cloud system. This authentication infrastructure achieves single sign-on (SSO), which allows users to log in once and access the various cloud systems without being asked to log in again at each system. Further, it does so without changing the design of the existing cloud systems by using a proxy certificate repository and Shibboleth authentication technology. We also report on a prototype implementation of the system that validates the design of the authentication infrastructure.