The Art of SharePoint Evolution

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Alternate Access Mapping in Sharepoint

with 16 comments

I’m posting this as a quick reference on how to use the Alternate Access Mapping in WSSv3 and MOSS 2007.

Alternate Access Mapping enables you to access your Sharepoint site via a typical url like http://mysharepoint.com instead of hitting the server name at http://mysharepointserver. In combination with DNS A host entries you can also define urls like http://mysite.mysharepoint.com even though your My Site web application is hosted on a different port.

So to start:

1. Go to Central Administration for your WSS or MOSS instance.

2. Click on the Operations Tab

3. Click on Alternate Access Mappings under Global Configuration

4. You should now see a list of your web applications, switch over to the one you want to map to the new URL by selecting it from the drop down on the right side.

5. Click on Edit Public URLs and change the desired zone URL type to your new domain name. You can also change your internal URLs also by clicking Add Internal URLs.

6. Now you’ll have to switch over to your DNS server.

Within the DNS Management Console and Under Forward Lookup Zones:

7. Add a new Primary Zone with your new domain name.

8. Add a new Host (A) to the records and point the IP Address to the sharepoint server.

And that should be it! Now you can have friendly URLs pointing to whatever Sharepoint Site Collection/Web Application you’d like without exposing the server names or ports.

Written by Henry

January 17, 2007 at 10:51 am

Posted in SharePoint

16 Responses to 'Alternate Access Mapping in Sharepoint'

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  1. Hello,

    I have installed/configured a MOSS 2007 website but am having some problems with the url mapping. The DNS entry for the site has been made but when I type in that name (1 word) for the site, the my sites page comes up instead of the main website application default aspx page. I’ve tried adding the name to the Alternate Access Mappings default and internet zone and adding a host header in IIS but so far, no success. Can you provide some insight into fixing this? Prior to all this, we did extend the application to port 80.Thanks.

    Terry

    Terry Varley

    15 Jun 07 at 10:49 am

  2. Hey Terry,

    I’m not too sure about what’s going on but you’ll want to make sure there’s a 1 to 1 correlation for each DNS and AAM entry. And then you’ll want to make sure in the Alternate Access Mapping that you have your portal as the default site collection. Let me know if that helps.

    Henry

    18 Jun 07 at 10:21 am

  3. When editing Public Zone URLs, do you typically replace the Default entry, or do you simply add the new address under one the corresponding entries below default.

    Default = http://unprefered-hostname
    Intranet = http://prefered-new-name
    Internet = http://prefered-new-name

    PlusUltra

    1 Dec 07 at 5:35 am

  4. Hey PlusUltra,

    It depends, but I do typically replace the default entry if that’s the only URL I want to use for the portal.

    Henry

    1 Dec 07 at 11:36 am

  5. Hi! I’ve just installed WSS 3.0 on my server and can’t figure out how to have the main site with a short url - like it was before with WSS 2.0 ->http://companyweb

    Is there a kind soul to help or direct me to the right answer (steps) to have something more friendly than http://server:port/site/sharepoint.

    Thanks in advance

    Matthew

    8 Jan 08 at 10:01 am

  6. Hi,

    I have one top level site collection “http://abc.xyz.com” but now I want to access it as http://abc.com.

    can you please guide on this how it can be done using aal or any way?

    Regards

    Srinu

    15 Mar 08 at 3:08 am

  7. Hey Srinu,

    if you have that already set in your alternate access mapping then an additional DNS entry should make it work.

    Henry

    15 Mar 08 at 6:30 pm

  8. So how would you compensate for secure? Where as for mine:

    Internal: http://www.mywss.com
    External: https://www.mywss.com

    Those are the only two addresses I would want.
    (I keep getting that darned “url may only map to one zone at a time” error)

    Jay

    19 May 08 at 4:53 am

  9. Hi Henry,

    You mention friendly URLs without exposing the server names or ports but I would like to know if there is anything more that needs to be done besides AAM and DNS?

    I’m trying to map the ugly http://intranet_test:port to the friendly http://intranet_test and all that comes up for me is “Under Construction” .

    Thanks in advance,

    Scott

    Scott

    20 May 08 at 1:18 pm

  10. Hi Henry,

    This is exactly what I was looking for but it doesn’t seem to be working for me.

    Is there something extra that needs to be done to have http://intranet_test:1234 mapped to http://intranet_test?

    Thanks,

    Scott

    Scott

    20 May 08 at 9:03 pm

  11. I would like to know something similar to what Jay asked. I’ve got my MOSS server setup internally as site.briarcrest.com and am trying to access that through my firewall. Obviously you would assume you would at least need 80 and 443 allowed, but I’m not getting anything from my webserver. What else needs to be opened through the firewall to allow that access?

    Thanks.

    Barry

    31 Jul 08 at 5:58 pm

  12. Hey Barry, I’m assuming you can access both port 80 and 443 internally? If so, then I can only imagine it being a router configuration and an update to your external DNS provider - most likely done with your domain registrar.

    Henry

    1 Aug 08 at 10:01 pm

  13. Hi Henry,

    Just wondering how I could do this;

    I have successfully mapped http://unfriendly_url:80 to http://friendly_url using the steps you provided above. Now I wanted to do the same thing for the central admin site which is hosted on the same server.

    How do I go about doing these as I don’t see any option to specify the port number when I add a host?

    Thanks in advance.

    Julius

    24 Sep 08 at 7:50 pm

  14. Thats brillent work mate. Thanks very much I was struggling for donkey days.

    Thx

    Desai

    2 Nov 08 at 8:04 am

  15. I have a problem in alternate access mapping. While i am dong on port 80. I have some problems,So i start working on separte portal named as http://server:9999.So for this i need to change to intranet url as http://Intranteportal.com. Present in my side i know the server name, and server host ipaddress, Domain name.So what are the changes to need to do on alternate access mapping in Moss2007. plz suggest and guide me how to change that url as mentioned above.

    Thanks in Advance…..!

  16. I have a problem in alternate access mapping. While i am dong on port 80. I have some problems,So i start working on separte portal named as http://server:9999 .So for this i need to change to intranet url as http://Intranteportal.com. Present in my side i know the server name, and server host ipaddress, Domain name.So what are the changes to need to do on alternate access mapping in Moss2007. plz suggest and guide me how to change that url as mentioned above.

    Thanks in Advance…..!

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