Can I do this with SPS2003?

[zaccaz]

Hi there,

I got 3 sites as AA,BB,CC, each site has its own W2K3 server as 1 domain/forest (each site connected via hardware vpn).

For each site's W2K3 server install WSS so each site will have it's own "portal"

I would like to have another SPS2003 server installed at AA & all users (from AA,BB,CC) will only hit this SPS2003, then SPS2003 will hit the correspoding site's WSS to send/retrieve data on behalf of user, i.e. act as the proxy agent only & didn't hold the actual data

If this concept is workable or not? If yes what should I pay attention to? Many thanks!

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

It should not be any problems setting this up. If you install the SPS2003 server, then you configure your WSS sites to be connceted to a Portal you should be able to have your users access the Portal instead of WSS.
And to make it easy to find the sites, have them listed in the Portal Site directory. I have connected "standlone" WSS sites (installations) to SPS2003 without any problems.

Just make sure that the communication between your 3 different locations are working. I would guess you have trust between the domains on your different sites?

Cheers,
Thomas

 

[zaccaz]

Hi thomas2000,

Thx for the info, I'd like to further explain that site AA,BB,CC are connected via vpn. I would like to have WSS at AA,BB,CC, then one SPS2003 at AA linking all WSS, in which this SPS2003 is public accessible, i.e. user can access SPS2003 at home.

Say at home I want to retreive info from CC's WSS, I just need to access SPS2003, and SPS2003 will on behalf of me to retrieve the data from CC's WSS, my computer at home has no direct connection to CC's WWS sever at all, my home pc just maintain a simple http sessoin with SPS2003.

Can I achieve this? Many thanks!

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

Well..out of the box I do not think you will be able to achieve this (but I am not totally sure!). I guess you would have to build some webservice that actully retrieves data from the other sites depending on which user is accessing the portal. And this would have to be done by using an account that can be authenticated on all the different sites.

I think it will be very hard to have your SPS2003 machine to act as a "proxy" server.

When you say SPS2003 is public accessible, do you mean it will be accessible from the Internet without your users connecting to your company VPN?

Regards,
Thomas

 

[zaccaz]

hi thomas, "public accessible" means i'll open up SPS2003 with only https access available from public internet, without the annoying of vpn client setup

 

[Thomas2000]

Hi,

Somehow you need to be able to use your account to authenticate with all the sites. I mean if you are accessing your SPS2003 on site AA and you need to get information from BB or CC site, by default it will be your account that you used to access SPS2003 on AA that will try to authenticate to the other sites (locations).

As said earlier, you might be able to build some kind of webservice that can handle the authentication, but that can be a hard thing to accomplish, since what you have access to in a sharepoint site is based on your user-rights on the account trying to access. So if your "personal" user account does not have any rights on BB, CC you can't get any data.
Building a webservice/application that uses a "general" account to handle authentication, will put you in a position where everyone will have the same kind of access (since that webservice/application account will need to have pretty high access to sharepoint sites).

Between your domain/forests do you have a trust between them? With a trust you will be able to use your account in one domain to gain access to a site in another domain. Also this means that you could connect your WSS sites to this portal and be able to access them from there.

I have just looked at Microsofts documentation about setting up SharePoint as an extranet, using Microsoft ISA, I am not sure what kind of other documentation is available on the net. We are running an extranet of SharePoint using ISA as a proxy and making it available from the internet over https, but we just have our environment in one location.

You sure seem to have a kind of complex setup of your SharePoint, but if you somehow could connect all your domains with somekind of trust it might be easier to achieve what you want. Just make sure you check the security issues aswell, I mean exposing an internal domain/Active Directory can cause security issues aswell.

I know the above is not a solution (or direct answer) to your question(s). But just thought I would mention what I know...

Cheers,
Thomas