Crowd or CrowdID or Standalone?

[Vera Henrichs]

Hello,

Because we want users to sign in on their Windows-pc and then automatically into JIRA (everybody is on LDAP now), we have found out that we have to use Crowd.

But, on the page to download to try it out, I don t know which one to use....
https://www.atlassian.com/software/crowd/download
What's the difference between the 3?

Thank you!

[MatthewC · Accepted solution]

if you are just trying it out, select Crowd Standalone. It comes with an application server and has everything you need to run a trial. The other two require you to run your own application server and install the applications.

The Crowd ID is an OpenID provider that can enable you to use your CrowdID to logon to external websites. From your question this si not what you want. leave it alone for now.

if you are looking for true Windows SSO you'll have to get an add-on from one of the Experts (AppFusions, Adaptavist both do windows authentication integration products).

There used to be some free NTLM based plugins but they were all NTLM v1 which has generally been deprecated for NTLMv2 and Kerberos.

If you know what you are doing, look up SPNEGO and you could build your own ;-)

[Manse Wolken]

Hello Vera,

Crowd helps you, if your users are able to put in their password at one Login of Confluence / Jira / FishEYE / ...

It does not help you utilizing NTLM or Kerberos for logins. Your users will have to put in their password at least once.

You might want to check out the AD SSO Connector from Appfusions (we use that one). It is a Plugin that enables the Services to use the Kerberos authentication.

[Vera Henrichs]

So you are saying Crowd isn t the right way to use it in combination with your Windows/credentials? The information I have read wasn't clear on that... So I'd like to have a definite answer.

And what does "your" plugin cost?

[Manse Wolken]

Cost was based on useramounts. And it was a one time cost. And it was in the region of the maintenance costs. But that was three years ago and I can't say how much the companies currently ask for.

It is a SPNEGO integration to the seraph framework with some modifications to the web.xml file.

An experienced java developer with knowledge in Kerberos and seraph might me able write her own plugin. We decided, that is was more expensive to develop the plugin inhouse than to buy that plugin.

[Vera Henrichs]

Ok, thank you.

BUt you cannot say for sure that Crowd isn't the right way? I'm really unsecure about it now...

[Manse Wolken]

For the specific problem of using Kerberos for user authentication, Crowd is not the solution.

In case you have more than just Jira and Confluence (lets say: Fisheye and Crucible) Crowd helps in managing groups for Fisheye and Crucible.

If you have around 500 users maximal, simply use the embedded crowd server of Jira. That will be good enough to manage your users.

[Vera Henrichs]

Well, we just have JIRA and Confluence. Managing the users in JIRA is fine because it's only like 25-50 users.

So... which one is best? Appfusions or Adaptavist? ;-)

[Vera Henrichs]

Hmm... JIRA is running on Linux. Should I use the Linux-download? (I've read in the "101" that I need the standalone)

[Vera Henrichs]

Help! Is Crowd the right way for the connection with Windows sign-on??