A Typical Portal Server Installation
Chapter 1 Portal Server Architecture 33
A Typical Portal Server Installation
Figure 1-3 on page 34 illustrates some of the components of a portal deployment
but does not address the actual physical network design, single points of failure,
nor high availability. See Chapter 5, “Creating Your Portal Design”, for more
detailed information on portal design.
This illustration shows the high-level architecture of a typical installation at a
company site for a business-to-employee portal. In this figure, the Gateway is
hosted in the company’s DMZ along with other systems accessible from the
Internet, including proxy/cache servers, web servers, and mail Gateways. The
portal node, portal search node, and directory server, are hosted on the internal
network where users have access to systems and services ranging from individual
employee desktop systems to legacy systems.
In Figure 1-3 on page 34, users on the Internet access the Gateway from a browser.
The Gateway connects the user to the IP address and port for the portal users are
attempting to access. For example, a B2B portal would usually allow access to only
port 443, the HTTPS port. Depending on the authorized use, the Gateway forwards
requests to the portal node, or directly to the service on the enterprise internal
network.
NOTE If you are designing an ISP hosting deployment, which hosts
separate Portal Server instances for business customers who each
want their own portal, contact your Sun Java System representative.
Portal Server requires customizations to provide ISP hosting
functionality.