Production and Test Federation

HKAF provides two complementary technical Federations, a Test Federation and a Production Federation. Both federations have the same tools and core services. However, they operate completely independently.

1. HKAF Production Federation

2. HKAF Test Federation

It provides a test environment for the following functions:

• HKAF tests patches and upgrades before applying to the Production Federation.
• Organizations assess the technologies of HKAF.
• Organizations test their Identity Providers and Service Providers for performing upgrade /development /testing before migration to production. To make the most of the Test Federation, organizations should have an IdP deployed that can be used for these purposes

Usage Policy

• To access the Production Federation, an organization MUST be a HKAF Member, see https://www.hkaf.edu.hk/subscribe/how-to-subscribe/how-to-subscribe. Use of the Production Federation is governed by the HKAF Federation Policy, see https://www.hkaf.edu.hk/federation-policy.
• Only Production Release and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) services can be registered in the Production Federation. All other non-production services must be registered in the HKAF Test Federation.
• An organization may be notified that a service is registered in the incorrect Federation. The organization must register the service in the correct Federation if instructed to do so by the HKAF Operator Team.
• An instance of each production service should be registered first as a test deployment in the Test Federation for initial testing, ongoing support and for the application of future enhancements
  and upgrades.
• All organizations should operate a test version of their Identity Providers (IdPs) in the HKAF Test Federation that is separate from their production deployment. This ensures that Production IdPs are not impacted by changes that occur in the Test Federation.

 Recommendation 

Having two independent federations requires that they will have different addresses, names, certificates, metadata etc., which will create subtle differences in the configuration of the various components. The major difference will be in the URLs used to reference various components. In general, the test federation will use the domain 'test.hkaf.edu.hk' while production will use 'hkaf.edu.hk'. (The word 'test' is removed from the domain).

 

The following tables provide a list of major technical components detailing the differences between the Test and Production Federations. Use "Copy Link Address" from the links below to obtain the correct URL.

 

Most of the HKAF Test environment components will display either "HKAF Test Environment" or "HKAF - Test Federation Deployment"  prominently on their web user interface.