Network Security and Ports

BA Insight products communicate with your network to perform various tasks.

  • In most instances, your network requires no special configuration beyond what is described in the Prerequisite and Installation topics.

  • If your network employs strict security policies that open only a select set of ports and protocols in firewalls, network routes, servers, etc. you must use the following information to ensure that BA Insight products can function without error or failure.

Internal Communication

BA Insight Smart Previews requires the following network connectivity:

  • HTTP or HTTPS access to the Smart Previews website and web services.
    • Default ports: 1234, 1237, 1238.
    • The services running on ports 1234 and 1237 can be configured to run on different ports.

    • Services running on port 1238 must use this port.

      Note: Port 1238 can’t be changed, but it doesn’t have to be exposed to internet, only the hybrid component accesses it.

  • Connectivity to SQL database and Microsoft Active Directory.

External Communication

BA Insight Smart Previews requires the following network connectivity:

  • Optional: HTTPS access to the Smart Previews Hybrid Service. See Install and Configure Smart Preview Hybrid Server.
    • Must be accessible from a location external to the network.
    • Must have a valid SSL certificate.
  • HTTPS access to SharePoint Online site
  • HTTP access to SharePoint Online site and any website crawled by SSA into your O365 index
  • Access to any File shares crawled by the SSA into your O365 index

Multiple Preview Servers

  • On-demand processing happens on only one server
  • You can balance the load between servers, but BA Insight offers no native support.

Example Network Deploying Smart Previews

The following diagram is just one example of how Smart Preview components and services can be distributed. 

The diagram below exhibits the following:

  • SharePoint Online
  • SharePoint On-Premise components
    • Connector Framework
    • Smart Pipeline
  • Smart Previews Hybrid service employing On-Demand Preview Fetchers
  • Smart Previews Import server employing On-Demand Preview service
  • Smart Previews database
  • Preview CEWS service

    SharePoint O365 Domain and Components