Sitelink

One of the challenges for global organizations is to enable secure remote access to file systems running across often dozens of branches and data centers around the world. Shifting local data to the cloud is usually not cost-effective if more than 95% of access to local data is also local.

Sitelink allows Access Anywhere instances to be “linked” together, allowing centralized access to remote “sites” each providing access to local file systems.

The Access Anywhere can be installed at each site that has local storage. The Access Anywhere will index one or more storage endpoints and provide the application front-end for access. If Sitelink is enabled at each office with a Access Anywhere then Administrators can choose to invite roles or users from other offices to local shared team folders by creating a special link. This link can be used to facilitate distributed team access to those folders from other sites.

Each site that has added a Sitelink folder using the special link does not replicate or cache files locally. It merely communicates with the master site (who shared the folder) and creates a local metadata cache of the data that is remotely stored.

When remote users access the (remote) team folder they browse the folder directory structure from the local metadata cache ie. all reads are free. If they need to download or upload a file to the shared folder the this is negotiated between the servers and the upload /download takes place. and metadata is updated in every location that has access to that folder.

Access control is managed centrally through the corporate Identity Access Management Service, normally Active Directory, LDAP or a SAML based solution.

The Access Anywhere serves as the ‘single pane of glass’ for storing data from local (and/or cloud) data sources and Sitelink results in an efficient content distribution that effectively supports ‘roaming’ directories that are accessible to other sites.

In this section, we refer to Access Anywhere from which the folder is being shared as the server, and Access Anywhere to which the folder is being shared as the client.

Client Access Anywheres access folders shared from Server Access Anywheres using ordinary Access Anywhere folder sharing links. To make it possible for folder links in general and Drop Folder links, in particular, to be created, Shared Links settings must be configured as described here.

The org. admin should take care when setting link sharing policies to ensure that sharing with Sitelink will work as intended by the organization. See Link Restrictions for more information.

Also, the settings on the Shared Link Permissions tab of the Shared Team Folders page must allow links to be generated for a folder that will be shared with Sitelink (or for any purpose).

Within Site Settings “Cluster” must be enabled. Password can be left blank. Disable this feature after configuration.

To configure Sitelink on the client Access Anywhere, a license key that allows the “Multisite Support (Cluster)” feature to be used must be installed on your Access Anywhere.

The “NAA Shared Folder” connector must be enabled in the package that is assigned to a Access Anywhere tenant (organization) for that tenant to have the option of adding folders shared from SItelink server Access Anywheres.

If org. members are to be allowed to add Sitelink folders as personal providers then the org. admin should include the NAA SHared Folder provider type in the list of selected provider types at the bottom of the User Governance tab of the Organization Policies page.

To share a folder, create a link and password and provide them to the user on the client Access Anywhere who will add the folder as an NAA Shared Folder provider. See Link Restrictions for more information.

To add a Sitelink folder as a provider, select the NAA Shared Folder provider type and enter the link and password provided by the server Access Anywhere user who is making the folder available for sharing.

Controls that are attached to links will apply when the links are being used for folder sharing with Sitelink. The following settings will affect sharing with Sitelink as follows:

• Enforce recipient authentication - Turning this on will prevent links that can be used for folder sharing with Sitelink from being generated.
• Enforce max. time expiration - Will cause the provider to stop working after the link's specified time limit has been reached.