Cloud Computing with the Windows® Azure™ Platform

Chapter 6. Authenticating and Authorizing Service Users

The pages of sample projects in Chapters 4, "Scaling Azure Table and Blob Storage" and 5, "Minimizing Risk When Moving to Azure Cloud Services" are available to anyone who knows the name of the cloud service; they require no user authentication or role-based authorization whatsoever. Few real-world services are likely to allow public access other than to simple demonstration versions. At the least, they'll require all production users to log into the Hosted Service as a member of one or more predefined role(s), such as user, reader, writer, supervisor, or administrator. A common method of securing access to a WebRole running on Windows Azure is to use an implementation of ASP.NET Membership Services that's customized to accommodate the cloud-computing infrastructure.

An alternative to a full-scale implementation of ASP.NET Membership Services and role management is basic Windows Live ID (WLID) authentication. A May 2009 update to the Azure Services Development Portal simplified WLID authentication by automatically adding a Live Services Existing APIs project for each existing and new Hosted Services project you create. The Windows Live ID Web Authentication SDK 1.2 and Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 provide sample code and ASP.NET server controls that you can use to implement WLID authentication for Azure projects in production.

Taking Advantage of ASP.NET Membership Services

The "Introduction to Membership" ...