Description

The Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1 adds support for the functionality provided by the auth-passthrough plugin function available with Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server Enterprise Edition 7.1. However, in Enterprise Server 2.1, the auth-passthrough plugin feature is configured differently.

The auth-passthrough plugin function in Enterprise Server Enterprise Edition 7.1 has been useful in two-tier deployment scenarios, where:

• Application Server instance is protected by a second firewall behind the corporate firewall.

• No client connections are permitted directly to the Application Server instance.

In such network architectures, a client connects to a front-end web server, which has been configured with the service-passthrough plugin function and forwards HTTP requests to the proxied Application Server instance for processing. The Application Server instance can only receive requests from the web server proxy, but never directly from any client hosts. As a result of this, any applications deployed on the proxied Application Server instance that query for client information, such as the client's IP address, will receive the proxy host IP, since that is the actual originating host of the relayed request.