Windows 2008/IIS7 public access

[kweilbacher]

I've setup a brand new Windows 2008 x64 server with IIS7 and installed Alfresco CE 3.4c on it. I've been struggling to set things up to access Alfresco remotely. The server is connected to a dedicated port on my firewall (internalIP address is 192.168.53.1). I can access IIS7 default web site just fine remotely. I've tried various combinations of redirecting ports (80/8080) to the server with no luck.

Any ideas?

[kweilbacher]

OK, I believe I have it working. For others with the same issues, here's what I did:
1. Installed Std Windows 2008 R2 Web Server (x64)
2. Installed free Microsoft Web Platform and installed ARR and URL Rewrite modules
http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/default.aspx
3. Followed instructions from this web site (skip page 1, and follow pages 2 and 3):
http://www.iisadmin.co.uk/?p=326&page=2
http://www.iisadmin.co.uk/?p=326&page=3
4. The only exception to the above instructions is that at the top of page 3, use (share.+) instead of (examples.+)

Cheers!

[benswitzer]

Hey,

Best bet is Tomcat connector (http://tomcat.apache.org/connectors-doc/).  Been using this for some years now.  Works well, fairly straight forward to setup.  The Tomcat instance that Alfresco ships with has AJP connector enabled.

Let me know if you require more details on how to setup.

Best,
Ben

[kweilbacher]

Thanks, Ben. I'm always willing to learn a better solution. As I am new to Tomcat, I don't know the benefits of using the Tomcat connector vs the AJP connector.

[kweilbacher]

Ben, any details on installing the Tomcat connector?

[benswitzer]

Hey.

Great article here: http://community.jboss.org/wiki/UsingModjk12WithJBossAndIIS7

Don't worry about the fact that it says its for JBoss, as JBoss uses Tomcat as its servlet container.  Also, you won't need to follow step 7 if you don't change the ajp port from 8009.  It's already setup in the Tomcat that ships with Alfresco community.

Best,
Ben

[kweilbacher]

Thanks, Ben, for the link. But the other question is: Why? What is better about this Tomcat connector over the one that comes bundled with Alfresco?

[benswitzer]

This is simply a bridge between IIS and Tomcat if you will.

HTTP requests are first captured by IIS and then passed over to Tomcat.  For your setup on Windows, this is simply the most straight forward way to handle requests without monkeying with ports in the Alfresco's Tomcat instance.

You could just as easily use Apache.

On *nix machines, port forwarding is a great option.  Not easily done on Windows.

[williamgh]

Is there any other details regarding this configuration?

http://tomcat.apache.org/connectors-doc/webserver_howto/iis.html <this info is too obscure to be loosely trasposed onto a Tomcat system

what should the registry strings be and where should they be placed?