Custom certificates for SAML in Docker

This guide explains how to add certificates required by SAML authentication — for example, the signing certificate of your Entra ID (Azure AD) enterprise application or a certificate issued by your enterprise Certificate Authority (CA) — to your Dataedo Docker deployment. The certificates are added to the list of certificates trusted by the Portal's backend service, so it can verify your identity provider.

This is not an HTTPS setup

Certificates described in this article do not enable HTTPS for Dataedo Portal and are not used as the Portal's website certificate. To serve the Portal over HTTPS with your own certificate and private key, follow Run portal over HTTPS.

To configure SAML itself, see Authentication.

Supported Certificate Formats

Dataedo Portal automatically detects and processes various certificate formats:

• .pem - PEM format (text with headers)
• .cer - Certificate format (PEM or DER, auto-detected)
• .crt - Certificate format (ready to use)
• .cert - Certificate format (PEM)
• .der - DER format (binary)

Smart Format Detection

The system automatically detects the certificate format by analyzing the file content, not its file extension. This ensures maximum compatibility with certificates from different sources.

Certificate setup

1. Prepare your certificates (with Azure SAML example)

First, prepare the certificates you want to use. As an example, we'll use Azure SAML integration.

1. In the Azure Portal, open your Enterprise Application for the Dataedo Portal
2. Navigate to Single sign-on → SAML Certificates
3. Download "Certificate (Base64)" - this gives you a .cer file in PEM format

2. Upload the certificates to the Docker environment

Connect to your Docker environment, create a local directory and place your certificate files inside:

mkdir ./certs
# Copy your certificate files to the new folder
cp your-certificate.cer ./certs/

3. Update Docker Compose

Add the certificate volume mount to your docker-compose.yml, eg, by running nano docker-compose.yml:

docker-compose.yml

services:
  backend:
    image: dataedo/web_api:stable
    volumes:
      - ./certs:/certs:ro # Mount certificates as read-only
    # ... other configuration

4. Start Your Container

sudo docker compose down
sudo docker compose up -d

The certificates will be automatically installed during container startup.

5. View Startup Logs

To verify certificate installation, check the container logs:

docker compose logs backend

You'll see output like this during container startup:

Detected mounted certificates in /certs - installing certificate support...
Installing certificate management packages...
Processing certificate: azure-sso.cer
  ✓ Converted PEM format to CRT
Installing 1 custom certificate(s) system-wide...
✓ Custom certificates successfully installed and available system-wide
Cleaning up package cache...

Related

For mounting other files (e.g., private keys) to the agent service, see Docker Volumes.