Alternate Access Mapping not working in SharePoint 2010 Workgroup

Question

I have tried to configure alternate access mappings in my SharePoint 2010 which is installed in WorkGroup Windows Server 2008 R2 server but could not make it work. Here are my steps.

1. Go to Central Administration-> Manage Web Application.
2. Select a web application and extend it.
3. Provide the my12server.com in the host header and leave other default values as it is. I changed the zone to Extranet.
4. Click Ok.
5. After sometime, it creates Web Application in SharePoint and Web Site in IIS.
6. I have changed my hosts file by adding entry 192.168.1.11 my12server.com
7. Browse the new extended. It asks for credential. Supplied the correct credential but nothing got display. Just a blank page.

Note: I have however successfully extended web application when the SharePoint 2010 is in domain machine.

Please advice me.

Thanks Prakash

Answer 1

SharePoint is designed to work in domain environments only. In other words, you cannot expect to run it on an underlying Windows Server which joined into a workgroup and expect full functionality. Although there are blog posts around describing installation in a workgroup environment (or, better to say, using local accounts), I wouldn't recommend wasting time with such a mode of operation.

Furthermore, it doesn't make sense to extend a web application just for the sake of providing another hostname. Extending web applications multiple times is mostly useful when you need different authentication providers for each of them. In your simple case you can just configure multiple Alternate Access Mapping records for a single web application.