HPE Morpheus Enterprise & VM Essentials SAML Integration with Keycloak: A Complete Technical Guide

1. Introduction 1.1 What is SAML 2.0? SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0 is an XML-based open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between two parties: an Identity Provider (IdP) that authenticates users, and a Service Provider (SP) that hosts the application. Instead of every application managing its own username/password database, SAML lets you delegate authentication to a central IdP. When a user logs in once at the IdP, they get access to all connected SPs without entering credentials again — this is Single Sign-On (SSO). In practical terms: the user clicks "Login with SSO" on the application, gets redirected to the IdP login page, authenticates there, and is sent back to the application with a cryptographically signed XML document (the "SAML assertion") that proves who they are and what groups they belong to. 1.2 Why Keycloak? There are several IdP options available (Okta, Azure AD, ADFS, Ping Identity, etc.), so why Keycloak? Open-source and fr