Publishing a Student Web Portal to the internet

[atamakosi]

My boss has decided that our current LMS isn't providing enough data to the parents so he would like us to use our SMS' built-in web portal which has heaps of data for parents and students. The only problem is I'm not entirely sure the steps I need to take to publish an internal site (http://databaseserver/studentportal, for example) and make that accessable to external networks. We have an ISA server setup through which all our traffic flows and our website is hosted off-site by a third party (with a Cpanel admin console on our server).

 

I'm vaguely certain I need to add/create a CName to point to our static IP and have a web listener on the ISA to redirect to the database server that hosts the portal. We currently already have our OWA setup and redirects to the exchange server fine, which I would like to avoid ruining if possible.

 

Does anyone have any resources or tips for doing this? I'm not sure what I might be doing wrong but so far I can't seem to publish to external networks.

 

1. create cname pointing to 192.168.1.1 (just using an example.) so when student's parent goes to http://mywebsite.com/studentportal they are redirected to the database server with IIS and the website that pulls data from the SMS.

2. create ISA rule to listen on port 80 for requests and forward to http://databaseserver/studentportal internally.

3. ???

4. Profit.

 

Always appreciate the help.

Edited August 1, 2011 by atamakosi

[atamakosi]

anyone?

[TheMan100]

I would create an A record to point to your public IP address, so that when they go to yourwebsite.com they'll end up at your website. Then allow port 80 on the firewall, then make IIS listen for requests for http://yourwebsite.com.

Or if you already have all of this already setup, then you could create virtual directories from your main IIS box, to the database server where the student portal is.

[atamakosi]

Thanks for the info. I'm still a little unsure if I'm completing this job correctly.

 

I've added an A record using Cpanel's simple DNS editor that points student.mywebsite.com to 1.2.3.4. I've then set an ISA rule to listen for requests for student.mywebsite.com and forward them to database.internal.domain on port 80.

 

Now I'm not sure if I need to correct anything in my internal DNS records but I've added a static Cname alias for student.internal.domain to forward to database.internal.domain. but this seems a bit odd to me as they are internal names.

 

So I'm trying to get a domain controller that has the DNS records, an ISA server to listen and allow the request, and a database server that actually has IIS and the site needing to be published to work together so students/parents can see their data. Will let you know how i get on, cheers!

[atamakosi]

Appear to be encountering an issue some where along the line.

 

I'm able to ping student.domain.com and i can see it resolves to my servers static IP so I'm thinking the A record is fine. But trying to open student.domain.com fails. I'm suspicious its either the firewall forwarding rule or something with the DNS. the firewall should be forwarding to database.internal.domain on path /student/* (the SMS installed it to this folder within the inetpub root). Do I actually need to change anything on the DNS records or would the problem be solely in the forwarding rule?

[TheMan100]

Have you tried going to IIS, right clicking the site, click edit bindings, click add, select appropriate IP and protocol (http or https), then where it says host name, type "student.domain.com"? It will then know to listen and respond to traffic requests to that domain.

[atamakosi]

wasn't able to locate the bindings you mention. the database server (with IIS running) is on server 2k3. don't know if that makes a difference.

[TheMan100]

Hmm, them instructions were for IIS 7. If you're using IIS 6, try following these instructions:

The Lazy Admin : Configure IIS 6.0 Host Headers

[atamakosi]

bit embarrassed about this but i discovered where the fault lay. I had checked, rechecked, reconfigured ad nauseum and it wasn't until i ran a port scan from an external network that i discovered our isp had blocked port 80. so anyone else having problems, remember to check the simple things first!