How To Use Host-Named Site Collections

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How To Use Host-Named Site Collections


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How To Use Host-Named Site Collections presented by André Vala.

 

In this video you will learn:

1. What are host-named site collections.
2. When to use host-named site collections.
3. How to create host-named site collections

 

Video Transcript:

Hi this is Andre Vala here I’m a SharePoint solutions architect at Create IT in Portugal and I’m a proud member of the European SharePoint community I’m here today to talk to you about hostname site collections in SharePoint 2013so in this how-to video you’ll learn what are host named site collections when to use them and how to create them let’s start with the what so standard site collections are also known has path based site collections and the common structure is this one you have a web application which has a host name such as www.portal.com  and then you have site collections inside that web application which use a managed path and a word to differentiate between each other and  that builds the final URL which would be www.portal.com slash sites slash company a or Company B so host name site collections are still site collections but instead of a managed path you get a full host name and a different host name for each a collection different from the application they’ve been around since SharePoint 2003 at that time they went by the name of scalable hosting mode and they had several limitations but in SharePoint 2013most limitations have been resolved it was this is a feature which was designed for scalability and for multi-tenancy scenarios and it’s actually used by Microsoft in office 365environments so when should you use this well of course it’s especially useful for multi-tenant scenarios since it’s used that way also when you have high scalability requirements regarding the number of sites that you have to create look at the scenario SharePoint has a supported limit of 20 web applications per farm so if you need to have more than 20 portals with different hostnames you can’t go with web application you have to go a different way and the way is host named site collections SharePoint can handle up to 250,000 site collections per farm assuming that you will share content databases so that you have more than one site collection on a single content database if you use even if you use a separate content data base per set collection you can still scaleup to 500 site collections but farm according to Microsoft this is now the recommended way of creating your fi of creating your site collection structure and it’s recommended overpassed based tech collections on most scenarios except in these cases if you need to use multiple application pools if you want to have multiple service application proxy groups if you want to use different litigation methods for each site collection because in this case since all of them belong to the same web application you have to use the same configurations that are defined at the web application level also if you need to use a self-service site creation feature this is not supported for host name site collections so in that way if that’s the case you have to go some other way finally if you require a SSL termination but your SSL termination device cannot be configured to produce a specific custom HTTP header then you have to go another way – there are documentation about this specific scenario online on TechNet so how do you create hostname site collections first of all you cannot create them in central administration you must use PowerShell command lets here’s the process first of all you create a web application you can figure an i is binding and then you create a root site collection which is required for calling purposes and then you can create your hostname site collections any number you want and then if required you can set alternate URLs for each host and site collection so let’s go to a demo I will just demonstrate how to do this on a SharePoint 2013 okay so for the demo I will be showing you how to create a hostname site collector following the steps that I have highlighted on the previous slides so this is the central administration portal for SharePoint 2013 this one is empty has only the default two web applications one for central administration the other for the App Catalog you can also see that in is there’s only the same default websites and for the databases also only for the databases used by the service applications so the first thing let’s just open here the PowerShell is e so just first you have to add the snap-in for Microsoft SharePoint afterwards I have a bunch of parameters here to help me with script next we have to create an education provider in this case we will be using windows dedication for the web application and now we have the new SP web application command lets that will allow us to perform the first step which is create the web application this step could be done manually in the central administration portal I’m just doing it here by script so that it all the whole experiences is PowerShell based so we will create a new web application whose name will be portal web app with the host header web app portal common port 80 create a new application pool called SharePoint portal with an application pool account of the underlying here on this parameter so it’s a vm/ administrator and then will you create a new database for content called WS s content underscore portal you will allow anonymous access and we will also use the education provider that we just created on the previous line so just to check if this works let’s just select this and run the selection running this command will take a while this is a the one that takes longer because it will be creating the application pool and also the content database so let’s just wait for it to finish so now that the application is created the next step is to add a new binding to the is website so you can do also do this this operation directly on the is manager so in practice what we’re going to do is create a new binding for the website for the host other star and the IP address star which means any host trailer and any IP address will always map to this website it will be SharePoint’s job to separate which request goes to each side collection ok so this is actually a requirement and this is also why it is recommended that you have a single web application because all the requests will go will be will be treated by that single application there’s a single is website so let’s just run this okay done let’s just check the state or status of things so going back to SharePoint let’s just refresh this we should have a new application here and I mean while it loads let’s just go to a is also refresh this okay here’s the portal web app if we check the bindings for it now we haven’t his binding here which is for any hostname and any IP address on port 80 and protocol HTTP which means all requests will be directed to this website ok here it is the portal web app so now the next thing we have to do is create the three side collections we have to create a root side collection it’s a mandatory step although even if we don’t actually use it and then we have to create the site collections the hostname cycle actions were the ones that we want so all the three lines are  the same the first one will have to be the root side collection so we’ll call it route portal com this is the magic parameter here so this is the parameter that will group all side collections and in state2 to Intel SharePoint that these are host name side collections inside the web application and it’s the host the webapp host header is used to map them to bind them together so the first one is the route side then the next one will be for company a in the third one for Company B they’re all the same the difference here is the first one uses the route site template and the other ones use site template which just is defined here has a parameter so the  route site will be a teen site and the via the wire there with the other web sites will use a publishing site so template so you could use all the same templates for all the cycle actions that’s doesn’t matter for this case although will be created in English which is language code 1 0 3 3 so let’s just run these three instructions so the cycle actions are all created according to the PowerShell output let’s just check let’s go back to central administration Application Management you’ve all set collections ok here they are the route portal company be calm so they are all created let’s just now let’s get to each one so company a here you are and company a be okay so you can you can see by the URL we can we can get to the site collections using a hostname actually different host names actually even different from the host name of the web application the limitation is that we have a single application with a single application pool as we can see here okay back to the slides thank you for watching this how-to video see you next time.

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