Integrating with LDAP and Active Directory

Many organizations still use an LDAP directory as their single source of truth for digital identities. Keycloak allows you to integrate with different LDAP server implementations so that you can leverage your existing security infrastructure and use all the authentication and authorization capabilities provided by Keycloak.

Keycloak can integrate using LDAP in different ways; it can act as a stateful broker where data from your LDAP directory is imported into the Keycloak database, as well as kept in sync with your LDAP directory, or it can act as a stateless broker delegating credential verification to your LDAP directory. You should also be able to set up multiple LDAP directories within a single realm and configure a priority order that Keycloak should respect when authenticating users.

In Keycloak, the term “user federation” refers to the capability to integrate with external identity stores. LDAP is a form of user...