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Concepts

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Andrios Robert

• 1 min read

Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management (IAM) platform. Self-hosting it puts your authentication, authorization, and user data entirely under your control. No vendor lock-in. No opaque outages. Just a hardened service you operate on your own hardware or cloud infrastructure.

With Keycloak Self-Hosted, you run the same features as the managed versions:

  • Single Sign-On (SSO) across all apps
  • OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML support
  • Fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Built-in user federation and social logins
  • Admin UI and REST APIs for automation

Why Self-Host Keycloak?

Self-hosting gives you full visibility into logs, metrics, and failures. You can tune every aspect—from database choice to clustering strategy—without waiting for someone else’s approval. You decide patch schedules. You enforce secrets management. You scale horizontally on your terms.

Keycloak Self-Hosted setup essentials:

  1. Provision a server or Kubernetes cluster.
  2. Deploy Keycloak via Docker, Podman, or Helm.
  3. Connect to a production-grade database (PostgreSQL recommended).
  4. Configure realms, clients, and identity providers.
  5. Harden security with TLS, reverse proxies, and strict admin access policies.
  6. Monitor with Prometheus, Grafana, or your observability stack.

Self-hosting also lets you integrate custom extensions. Need a non-standard identity flow? Write a Keycloak SPI (Service Provider Interface) plugin and drop it into your deployment. No waiting for upstream merges.

Performance and Scaling

Cluster Keycloak nodes behind a load balancer. Enable sticky sessions for browser-based logins. Use distributed caches (Infinispan) tuned to your traffic profile. Keep the database fast—Keycloak’s latency often comes from slow queries under load.

Security Practices

Rotate admin credentials. Enforce MFA for all privileged accounts. Keep your Keycloak version current; security patches often address high-severity CVEs. Review audit logs daily.

When you own the stack, Keycloak Self-Hosted becomes not just a service, but a foundation. You know how it works, why it fails, and how to make it stronger.

Don’t just read about it—deploy it. See Keycloak Self-Hosted live in minutes with hoop.dev and turn control into reality.