Integrating with a customer portal
There are two major types of integrations with external customer portals:
- Direct: End-client uses MetalSoft’s user portal to deploy infrastructure
- Indirect: End-client uses customer portal to deploy infrastructure
Direct integration with an upstream customer portal
Section titled “Direct integration with an upstream customer portal”In this setup the MetalSoft end user portal (the drag and drop interface) is exposed to the user.
This setup is relatively easy to deploy and provides a good user experience to end-users for bare metal as a service offerings. It is however not suitable if other high level services such as VM-as-a-Service is offered.
There are multiple supported mechanisms for authenticating users in MetalSoft portal. More than one can be active at any give time:
- Using SAML (recommended)
- Using LDAP
- Using built-in authentication
The choice will depend on the capabilities of the portal. For more information visit Authentication Overview.
SAML-compatible ID service (Recommended)
Section titled “SAML-compatible ID service (Recommended)”If the existing user portal uses a SAML-compatible ID service such as Azure AD, OKTA, Auth0 for login then this setup is very simple as MetalSoft can be configured to use the same SAML provider from the Global Configuration>Authentication tab.
For an example configuration consult: Configuring SAML for OKTA
LDAP-compatible ID service
Section titled “LDAP-compatible ID service”If the existing user portal uses a LDAP-based login (FreeIPA, Active Directory) then MetalSoft should be configured to use LDAP protocol from the Global Configuration>Authentication tab.
For an example configuration consult: Configuring LDAP for Microsoft Active Directory
Built-in authentication
Section titled “Built-in authentication”MetalSoft’s built-in user management system is relatively robust. A portal could either:
- Create the users and set passwords using the API
- Let users sign-up on MetalSoft’s sign-up page.
Enabling user sign-up
Section titled “Enabling user sign-up”A partner portal could redirect users to the MetalSoft Signup page. To enable the Built-in sign-up process: Global Configuration > Authentication > Signup page enabled.
Once enabled the signup button and the signup process will be enabled and available at https:/<env_hostname>/en/signup.
Note that users can also enable or disable authenticator on their account on their own.
Indirect integration with an upstream customer portal
Section titled “Indirect integration with an upstream customer portal”In many situations the upstream portal will use API calls to managed infrastructures:
