SharePoint: Alternate Access Mappings (AAM)

Summary of Issue

One of my clients has a WSS v3.0 site that is being hosted by GoDaddy on a Virtual Dedicated Server.  It is set up to deny all connections except the white-listed IP Address in the Windows Firewall.  All traffic is passed over an SSL connection.  The issus was that WSS v3.0 search did not search.

In the Event Log I found the following error:
Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search
Event Category:    Gatherer
Event ID:    2436
Date:        1/5/2007
Time:        10:40:01 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    TEAS-A02
Description:
The start address  cannot be crawled.</pre>
<pre>Context: Application ‘Search index file on the search server’, Catalog ‘Search’</pre>
<pre>Details:
Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access
Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this
content. (0×80041205)

Methods to resolve the problem

1. Central Administration > Application Management > Create or Extend Web Application > Extend Web Application to Another IIS Web Site
2. Web Application: Selected my web application that I want to extend
3. IIS Web Site: Changed the description of the IIS Site to be “[COMPANY] Search – [PORT]” for easy reference later on
5. Load Balanced URL: changed Zone to Custom
6. Clicked OK I let the box sit for a few minutes to index on its own and then performed a search.  Search results started rolling in!

Tested

July 2009

Sources

• http://mysharepointblog.com/post/2007/01/Windows-SharePoint-Services-%28WSS%29-30-Search-Setup-Notes.aspx
• http://certcities.com/editorial/columns/story.asp?EditorialsID=370