After migrating a Project Server (or any other SharePoint web app) to a new SharePoint 2010 farm using ADFS for federated authentication and multi-tenancy you receive the below error message when trying to access some of the migrated site collections. In my case the root site worked but /PWA failed.

Also if you reprovision a new site collection (include a PWA) in the same web application it also works fine.

 

Error message from ADFS

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There was a problem accessing the site. Try to browse to the site again.

If the problem persists, contact the administrator of this site and provide the reference number to identify the problem.

Reference number: [GUID]

 

Event log on ADFS server

Log Name: AD FS 2.0/Admin
Source: AD FS 2.0
Date: 5/11/2012 10:00:43 PM
Event ID: 364
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: AD FS

Description:

Encountered error during federation passive request.
Additional Data

Exception details:
Microsoft.IdentityServer.Web.InvalidRequestException: MSIS7042: The same client browser session has made ‘6’ requests in the last ‘5’ seconds. Contact your administrator for details.

at Microsoft.IdentityServer.Web.FederationPassiveAuthentication. UpdateLoopDetectionCookie()

at Microsoft.IdentityServer.Web.FederationPassiveAuthentication. SendSignInResponse(MSISSignInResponse response)

 

Cause

What’s happening is that while authentication works as expected on some sites, when you open a particular site collection the authentication goes into a loop, eventually failing when the ADFS server detects this redirect loop.

After a fair amount of digging the problem turned out to be in the multi-tenancy configuration of this particular farm. Specifically the site collections for some reason did not all have a subscription.

Using the PowerShell command ‘Get-SPSite https://site/sitecollection1’ against two site collections to compare the settings turned up the key difference:

image

 

This makes sense as to why the authentication is failing; the different site subscription overrides the FedAuth authentication cookie assigned by ADFS as soon as it is assigned, causing the page to redirect back to re-authenticate.

 

Resolution

Fortunately once the above was found the fix is simple, run the following command in PowerShell:

Get-SPSite | Set-SPSite 
–SiteSubscription [Guide of site subscription]

 

Now after a quick IISRESET all should be working!

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