Understanding Multiple Portals

Multiple portals share the same user set. The features of multiple portals include the following:

• A portal is identified by a URL. For example: http://hr.xyz.com/portal or http://eng.xyz.com/portal

• Multiple portals share the same user repository — the same Access Manager and the Directory server. You use Access Manager to manage end users, and you do not need to synchronize end-user data in LDAP with any other repository. All related data related to end users resides in only one directory server.

• You can deploy multiple portals and Portal Server instances on one or more hosts. For example, one host may have two portal server instances serving content for one portal and three Portal Server instances serving another portal. Each Portal Server instance must run inside a different web container instance.

All portals share these components:

• Rewriter - Although this component is shared, you can define a different rule set for each portal.

• SSO Adapter - Although this component is shared, you can define a different adapter for each portal.

• All Secure Remote Access services

The following components have a one-to-one relationship with portals:

• Desktop - Each portal has an independent Desktop.

• Subscriptions - This is configured differently per portal.

• WSRP - Producer and Consumer - Independent set of Producers and Configured Producers for each portal.

Search can have a many-to-many relationship with portals:

• One portal can use one search server.

• Many portals can use a single search server.

• Each portal can use more than one search server.

End users see different content for different portals and can customize the each portal's Desktop. Single sign-on between portals is possible. An end user who has access to two portals at a corporation would typically experience the following sequence:

• Types in a URL for Portal One and authenticates using the corporate identify.

• Views personalized content on Portal One.

• Types in a URL for Portal Two without needing to provide authentication.

• Views personalized content on Portal Two.

Portals that use different Access Managers are not multiple portals. They are independent and unrelated portals, each with its own set of users.

Access Manger can be a collection of its own instances, all using the same set of Directory Server instances. Different Access Managers are two unrelated Access Managers, not different instances of the same Access Manager.