I am installing a new SharePoint 2013 farm in a three-tier configuration. I have done extensive research, and everything has gone very smoothly except for creating the web application and site collections. I keep getting myself more and more confused about host names and the proper way to set up the public URLs and host headers, especially when it comes to adding mysites.
GOAL1: I would like my staff to be able to type the intranet name of the site (just "inside") and get to it without adding the FQDN (our older sharepoint site works this way).
GOAL2: I would like to host the mysites on a separate web application / content database.
- Environment: a public school with 120 users - one intranet site collection and one mysite site collection. We will eventually use all features - Office Web Apps, workflow, BI, and maybe the app store.
- Domain: alton.local
- Server Names: acsspAPP (hosting CA and applications) and acsspWEB
- Internal URL: http://inside (maps to http://inside.alton.local)
- External URL: http://inside.alton.k12.nh.us
- MySites: (ideally) http://my.alton.local (separate web application / database)
When I create the web application as follows (per the Microsoft tech lab guide), I can access it by typing http://inside.alton.local but NOT via http://inside :
- Port: 80
- Host Header: inside.alton.local
- Public URL: http://inside.alton.local
- DNS: on zone alton.local, an A record for "inside" points to the IP address of the SharePoint WEB server, and can ping it.
So, my questions are:
1. Is my web application set up correctly?
2. Should I use AAM's, HNSC's with URL mappings via Set-SPSiteURL, or ... ?
3. How should I set up the My Sites, specifically:
- Can they have a URL like http://my.alton.local , running on a separate web application / dB?
- Can they run on Port 80 or should I be using a separate port (Microsoft Tech Lab Guide does do it with a separate port).
Thanks for your help - I want to get this correct from the beginning.