Hi all,
Recently came accros the need for a filegateway for a customers that has a 40TB Nexis pro system and needed to access a workspace through VPN. As the filegateway is still to be developed for Nexis I decided to try to setup a DIY solution and as it seems to work fine I thought it might be nice to share it
What you need hardware wise is no different then what you would use for a normal filegateway. A Windows 7 64 pro PC with 2 network cards preferably with one network card that is supported for Nexis/ISIS. I used an Intel pro 1000.
Experienced Nexis/ISIS users should skip reading step 1.
1.After you have setup windows inc drivers, updates and an antivirus solution (if you want one), you create a new user for example 'vpn-transfer'. Then for convenience you rename the 2 network cards. The one connected to the Nexis you name 'Nexis" and the other SMB-FTP. On the 'Nexis' network card you leave the default gateway empty so it can't communicate ouside its subnet and the other you give the ip you need for it be accesible from 'foreign' networks (so with the default gateway and dns ip's entered). Then you install nexis client and after a restart you tell it to only use the 'nexis' card. Just make sure the other SMB-FTP network card is not used. Inside the Nexis management webpage create a new User (for example 'vpn-transfer' and give it read or read/write access to the 'transfer' workspace. Now you mount the Nexis workspace you want to be accessible through smb or ftp. (For security reasons it is always better to use a seperate workspace.)
2. In my example I will use a workspace called 'transfer'. Connect to the Nexis and in Nexis client set the mount point of the desired workspace to a fixed letter, for example T:\ (for transfer).
Now the first thing to is to create a folder on the C:\ (or any other) drive called 'VirtualLinks'. Then open a dos prompt and type:
mklink /d C:\VirtualLinks\transfer T:\
This should create a virtual link to the T:\ transfer workspace inside the VirtualLinks folder with the name transfer. Now right click this virtual link and you will see that you can share this link in the same way you are able to share any other folder or drive. After enabling sharing of the virtual link click on permissions and give the user you want to be able to have access to the workspace, in my case 'vpn-transfer', read or read/write access.
You should now have access from any Windows PC that can connect to the filegateway PC to the shared transfer workspace. Note: On 2 macs I tested this share is seen as 'SMB FAT' so transfers of big files fail. If I find a solution I will report back.
If you also need ftp access you can install filezilla server or setup the build in IIS ftp server inside Windows7. In general I prefer IIS but filezilla is more user friendly and had better compatibility with other OS's then windows.
Inside the ftp server of choice, select the C:\VirtualLinks folder as the mount point for the ftp share and setup the desired user and password.
If you want access to multiple workspaces just add more 'mklink' virtual links inside the C:\VirtualLinks folder and share them through windows. They will automatically also show up in the ftp client as the mount point is the folder on top of the virtual links.
Hope this guide helps anyone.
(If this method changes the need of the development of a Nexis filegateway I don't know. I guess it is up to Bob Russo.)