PS Financials - configuring the iis web portal for external access

[abers]

Hello,

 

Hoping you can help as this is not my forte.

 

We had PS financials installed over the summer and I am getting pressured to make the web portal accessible from our other sites. PS haven't been particularly helpful with setting it up as I am not sure on what I need to do and they just assume I do.

 

I've looked online but it still confuses me, I have an external IP and i've gone into the IIS manager and gone to the default website > bindings and added our external IP to there but obviously that points towards our router.

 

Do i need to get myself a seperate spare IP to use with PS?

 

I am very limited on my knowledge with things like this so please accept my apologies for lack of knowledge.

 

Thank you in advance,

[localzuk]

The way to do this is "NAT" - basically port forwarding. Your router needs to handle the config of where requests to the web server port (also, bear in mind that PSF MyPortal is port 80, ie not secure, by default, so you'll want to get an SSL certificate for it before letting it go live, and only open port 443).

 

So, what'll happen in effect is someone will go to your public IP and it'll forward that request to your internal IIS server. You don't have to put a new IP on the server, unless you are going to go the whole hog and make it a fully routable server.

[abers]

Right ok, so in step by step form :-s

 

On the IIS manager > bindings I add my public ip? - check

 

Im assuming I can buy an SSL certificate online? what do I need to do with it then?

 

we use smoothwall here so I have control over the firewall / router side of things - but what do I actually need to do?

 

Sorry for being so basic but I really am not up to speed on doing bits like this.

[Meldrew]

Hi,

 

No, keep your IP address in the bindings set to the server internal IP. I don't know smoothwall at all, but essentially you'll need to set smoothwall to listen on a specific ports (2 ports actually, 80 and 443) and forward any data it receives to the IP address of your PSF server. I'm sure there are people here who know smoothwall and can step you through that. As localzuk, says, you'll also need a certificate. You can get them for free, but that requires extra knowledge and complication, so you may wish to buy one for simplicity. If you buy one, there should be instructions about how to import this into your server so you can use it with IIS.

 

Also, knowing PSF, do change your PSF admin password before doing this to ensure it's secure.

 

Meldrew

[abers]

thank you, I think I am getting there, i've removed our external IP from the bindings and added the PSF's internal IP to the bindings.

 

I've brought a certificate from godaddy and have gone onto the IIS server and then to create certificate request, it is asking me for a common name? Is this the internal server's localhost address as that is what the certificate needs to be securing?

 

Assistance with the smoothwall bit would be helpful!