Installation – Public Internet Access
Organisations will usually setup Sharperlight so that only users on their local network can access the Sharperlight Reports in Excel or the Web Channel. On occasions however, secure external access over the Internet to the Sharperlight Reports is required. In most cases external access would be restricted to Published Reports in the Web Channel but it can also allow Remote Connections from Sharperlight Client Installations so that Excel and the other Client Application can access data.
If the goal is to provide external access to Sharperlight over the Internet it is recommended that the following environment be setup separately to any internal Sharperlight Service you may be using. You will notice that in general the procedure is the same as any other Service that is being prepared for Public exposure to the Internet.
Setup
- Prepare an Application Server that will be hosting the Sharperlight Service
- Make sure this Application Server has a good Firewall and Security
- Prepare a public domain name that maps to your internet IP Address
- Install Sharperlight and the required DataModels and set the database connects.
- In IIS setup a HTTPS SSL certificate (This is optional but recommend so that all traffic uses https SSL)
- In Sharperlight Client Setup, setup the Service connection details to use the public domain name.
- Start the Sharperlight Service
- Ensure the Ports used by Sharperlight e.g. 443, 80 and 4001 are port forward on your router to the Application Server.
- Test the public access to the Web Channel via an external device by going to the main index page of the Web Channel.
- Test the public Client access by setting up a Remote Connection in Client Setup. In this way Excel and the other Client Applications can be used.
Security
The Sharperlight Web Service API will encrypt packets between the Client and Server (Excel, Publisher etc.). With regards to the Sharperlight Web Channel all user authenication is encrypted but the report connents are only compressed. For these reasons it is highly recommended that SSL HTTPS be setup in addition to the inbuild Sharperlight encyrption when exposing your data to the Internet.
If the Sharperlight Service has been setup to use NTLM authentication then only users with trusted Windows Domain accounts will be able to access the content. If the Service authentication is set to Default then a mixture of named Sharperlight accounts and Windows Domain Accounts can be used as long as they exist in Site Setup.
If Clients are Remote Connecting to this Service from a local installation of Sharperlight and are using Excel for example, it is recommend that you also add a password to the Service for an additional level of security. In this way the user will need the Service password to Remote Connect to the Service and after that they will need a valid sign on.
Client Setup showing Service details for HTTPS on Port 443 using only Windows Domain Accounts
The public URL address in this example would be
https://www.YourCompany.Com/mdService1Rest/Index
Client Installtion of Sharperlight showing the Client Setup Remote Connection to the Public Service
