Portal Design Approach
•Usage estimates, which include your assumptions on the total number of registered users, average percentage of registered users logged in per day, average concurrent users that are logged in per day, average login time, average number of content channels that a logged in user has selected, and average number of application channels that a logged in user has selected.
Additionally, you need to consider how the following three network zones fit into your design:
•Internet. The public Internet is any network outside of the intranet and DMZ. Users portal server and securely access the Gateway and from here.
•Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). A secure area between two firewalls, enabling access to internal resources while limiting potential for unauthorized entry. The Gateway resides here where it can securely direct traffic from the application and content servers to the Internet.
•Intranet. Contains all resource servers. This includes intranet applications, web content servers, and application servers. The Portal Server and Directory Server reside here.
The logical architecture describes the Portal Desktop look and feel, including potential items such as:
•Default page, with its default banner, logo, channels; total page weight, that is, total number of bytes of all the components of the page, including HTML, style sheet, JavaScript™, and image files; total number of HTTP requests for the page, that is, how many HTTP requests are required to complete downloading the page.
•Personalized pages, with channels that users can conceivably display and what preferences are available.
The logical architecture is where you also develop a caching strategy, if your site requires one. If the pages returned to your users contain references to large numbers of images, Portal Server can deliver these images for all users. However, if these types of requests can be offloaded to a reverse proxy type of caching appliance, you can free up system resources so that Portal Server can service additional users. Additionally, by placing a caching appliance closer to end users, these images can be delivered to end users somewhat more quickly, thus enhancing the overall end user experience.
