Reference: Glossary of terms used with Office 365 with single sign-on and Azure Virtual Machines
Applies to: Office 365
Summary: Contains a subset of terms and definitions used in Office 365 and Azure.
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Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
claim |
A statement that one entity makes about itself or another subject. For example, the statement can be about a name, email, group, privilege, or capability. Claims have a provider that issues them (in this context, an Office 365 customer), and they are given one or more values. They are also defined by a claim value type and, possibly, associated metadata. |
Federation Service |
A logical instance of Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0. A Federation Service can be deployed as a standalone federation server or as a load-balanced federation server farm. The name of the Federation Service defaults to the subject name of the SSL/TLS certificate. The DNS name of the Federation Service must be used in the subject name of the SSL/TLS certificate. |
federation server |
A federation server serves as part of a Federation Service that can issue, manage, and validate requests for security tokens and identity management. Security tokens consist of a collection of claims, such as a user's name or role. |
federation server farm |
Two or more federation servers in the same network that are configured to act as one redundant Federation Service. |
federation server proxy |
A computer running Windows Server 2008 R2 that has been configured to act as an intermediary proxy service between a client on the Internet and a Federation Service that is located behind a firewall on an organization’s network. To allow remote access to the services in Office 365, such as from a smart phone, home computer, or Internet kiosk, you need to deploy a federation server proxy. |
network load balancer |
A dedicated application (such as Network Load Balancing (NLB)) or hardware device (such as a multilayer switch) used to provide fault tolerance, high availability, and load balancing across multiple nodes. For AD FS 2.0, the cluster DNS name that you create using this NLB must match the Federation Service name that you specified when you deployed your first federation server in your farm. |
virtual private network (VPN) |
A network configuration in Azure that enables the administrator to securely connect the Azure Virtual Machines to the on-premises network. |
Azure Virtual Machine (virtual machine) |
A software implementation of a computer that supports the execution of a complete operating system. These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built to provide a platform to run applications on. |