Internally hosting websites and Smoothwall

[Danp]

I have taken a couple of websites back in house and host them here, since then any user who tries to view one of these sites and who goes through our internal Smoothwall filter gets a white page with the Smoothwall favicon. No error message.

 

Any ideas?

[Gaz]

Do you need to filter your own websites? Maybe just add them to the exceptions?

[FN-GM]

Setup your internal DNS with a zone for your domain name, create a www. record so it points to the internal IP address of the web server. That way the traffic will never even get to the Smoothwall. Much more efficient way of doing it.

[Danp]

Do you need to filter your own websites? Maybe just add them to the exceptions?

 

No, we don't.

 

Setup your internal DNS with a zone for your domain name, create a www. record so it points to the internal IP address of the web server. That way the traffic will never even get to the Smoothwall. Much more efficient way of doing it.

 

Agreed. But, I'm not exactly sure how. The emails for one of the domains is an Office 365 so the dns is currently pointing to that.

[FN-GM]

It is configured separately to your existing setup its on your own internal DNS server. I am assuming you use Windows?

 

In the console tree, right-click a DNS server, and then click New Zone to open the New Zone Wizard. - Use a primary zone. - https://gearhost.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200342285-Add-a-zone-domain-name-to-DNS-in-Windows-Server-2008

 

Then create a new A record for the site - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779029(v=ws.10).aspx

[Danp]

It is configured separately to your existing setup its on your own internal DNS server. I am assuming you use Windows?

 

In the console tree, right-click a DNS server, and then click New Zone to open the New Zone Wizard. - Use a primary zone. - https://gearhost.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200342285-Add-a-zone-domain-name-to-DNS-in-Windows-Server-2008

 

Then create a new A record for the site - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779029(v=ws.10).aspx

 

Yes, Windows.

 

I'll give it a go, what's the worst that can happen...

 

Thank you.

[FN-GM]

Just remember when you make the change it may take a while to replicate. You also may need to flush the DNS on the local machine ipconfig /flushdns

[sonofsanta]

Agreed. But, I'm not exactly sure how. The emails for one of the domains is an Office 365 so the dns is currently pointing to that.

 

Email is an MX record, websites are A records (or CNAME for extra entries against a single IP - so mail. might be your main server name, and you'd have m. as a cname for when you're too lazy to type three extra latters). In other words: email shouldn't be affected.

[Danp]

Well, that didnt work. Left it a couple of hours and it stopped working internally and externally. Makes me think something else is not right on the DC.

[Steve21]

After weeks of issues with Smoothwall and hosting websites we were told the only way to get it to work was to put all our sites in bypasses and basically ignore the Smoothwall for all of it. Then just use the reverse proxy on the Smoothwall for external connections to go straight to the server bypassing DC etc.

 

Setup the DC to point DNS directly to our server and bypasses via GPO etc.

 

Steve

[FN-GM]

Email is an MX record, websites are A records (or CNAME for extra entries against a single IP - so mail. might be your main server name, and you'd have m. as a cname for when you're too lazy to type three extra latters). In other words: email shouldn't be affected.

 

MX records won't be needed for internal DNS.

 

Well, that didnt work. Left it a couple of hours and it stopped working internally and externally. Makes me think something else is not right on the DC.

 

Something isn't setup correctly. Can you post a network diagram?

[Danp]

Added the IPs and Hostnames into the Smoothwall box and all is good. Nice and simple!

[ChrisERoots]

Added the IPs and Hostnames into the Smoothwall box and all is good. Nice and simple!

 

Just suffering with this problem myself using some iDevices. Could you let me know where you put those items on the Smoothwall please?

[simpsonj]

Apologies for necro raising this thread, but having a similar issue accessing our internal Spiceworks website, if there's a simple solution, would be interested, otherwise I'll try the DNS route.