How do I properly create & configure a second web application & site collection on the same server?

Question

We have an existing web application and site collection which serves as our main portal.

I need to create an additional web application on the same server, and a site collection on it. This will have entirely different content and will be used only by a specific group of users (board members). These users should not have access to our main portal.

We have:

http://portal (portal.ourdomain.com on port 80)

We'd like, in addition to that:

http://board (board.ourdomain.com)

We already have the new DNS entry pointing to the SharePoint server.

• Should I create the board application on port 81?
• Should I provide a Host Header string?
  • If so, would that be 'board.ourdomain.com' or 'http://boardportal'?
• Do I need to mess with alternate access mappings?

Answer 1

You can create a new web application on port 81.

So http://board:81 is your second web application.

1. board.ourdomain.com
2. board

Both the above should be A Name Record in the DNS Server pointing to the SharePoint Server (IP Address of the Cluster / the server in the farm hosting Web Front End Services)

Alternate access mapping should be like this for http://board:81 (web application) :

Internet : board.ourdomain.com
Default : http://board
Intranet : http://board

If you just wish to expose http://board over the internet and not http://portal , then you can also create a firewall rule blocking port 80 and allowing port 81 from the internet to the internal lan where your sharepoint is hosted.

Answer 2

Since this is a separate web application, you can still use port 80 and specify http://board in your host header. This will work as long as your existing http://portal site is also using only the host header and not the wildcard * where it intercepts all requests to port 80.

As Moss Farmer mentions, you will need to define your Alternate Access Mappings so that the new web application will respond to both http://board and http://board.ourdomain.com

There should not be a need to have anything listening on port 81