Managing Gateway Servers

The Acronis Cyber Files Gateway Server is the server contacted by the Acronis Cyber Files mobile app that handles accessing and manipulating files and folders in file servers, SharePoint respositories, and/or Sync & Share volumes. The Gateway Server is the "gateway" for mobile clients to their files.

The Acronis Cyber Files Server can manage and configure one or more Gateway Servers from the same management console. The Gateway Servers under management appear in the Gateway Servers section of the Mobile Access menu.

  • Type - Shows the type of the gateway, at the moment it can only be of the Server type.
  • Name - Cosmetic name given to the gateway when you create it.
  • Address - DNS name or IP address of the gateway.
  • Version - Shows the version of the Acronis Cyber Files Gateway Server.
  • Status - Shows whether the server is Online or Offline.
  • Active Sessions - Number of currently active sessions to this Gateway Server.
  • Licenses Used - Number of licenses used and the number of available licenses.
  • License - Shows the current type(s) of license(s) used by the Gateway Server.

You can register a new Gateway Server using the Add new Gateway Server button.

From the actions menu for each Gateway Server, an administrator can:

  • get more details on a server and its performance.

  • edit its configuration.

  • change the access restrictions for the server.

  • change licensing for the server.

  • remove the server.

Bookmarks for data sources are irreversibly lost upon removal of the Gateway Server where they reside. Adding back the server and related data sources to the Cyber Files Server Administration console cannot undo this action.
The Gateway Server uses the Windows HTTP.sys service and will enforce the relevant Windows settings on the machine, including the Microsoft Secure Channel (schannel) ones that manage TLS encryption security.
Customers who wish to modify the Gateway Server service security will need to use a non-Acronis tool, such as IIS Crypto, to manage these Windows settings.

Gateway Server Search Options

Requirements

Acronis Cyber Files uses Windows Search to allow searching in Network data sources. Windows Search is a built-in feature of Windows Server but it is not enabled by default.

To turn it on, do the following:

  • Add/install the File Services Role in the Server Manager.
  • Make sure that the Windows Search Service is enabled and started.

If the above requirements are not met, it will not be possible to search in Network data sources.

The search is not supported also in those cases:

  • for NAS file servers, CMIS and SharePoint data locations. However, there is support for SMB/CIFS file servers.
  • at the root of file servers (//server); it will rather work only in actual shares inside (//server/share)
  • if the service account on the Gateway machine doesn't have access (windows permissions) to the computer that hosts the remote share. To check this, try running the Gateway service with an admin service account.

The Search field appears disabled if:

  • it is not possible to search for any reason
  • the indexed directory is empty

Index local data sources for filename search

Searching in Network data sources relies on the Acronis Cyber Files Gateway server and Windows Search index. If Windows Search index is enabled for the desired volume and it has been indexed, both deep and content searches can be performed there.

By default, indexed searching is enabled on all Gateway Servers. You can disable or enable indexed searching for each Gateway Server in the Gateway’s Edit Server dialog.

  1. Open the Acronis Cyber Files Administration console.
  2. Navigate to Mobile Access > Gateway server > Edit > Search.

  3. Select:

    • the Index local data sources for filename search check box
    • Optionally, the Support content search using Microsoft Windows Search where available check box.

Default path

By default on a standalone server, Acronis Cyber Files stores index files in the Search Indexes directory in the Acronis Cyber Files Gateway Server application folder. If you would like to locate the index files in a different location, enter the path to a new folder.

Support content search using Microsoft Windows Search where available

Support for content search of shared folders is enabled by default, it can be turned on and off using this option. You can enable or disable content searching for each Gateway Server individually.

Windows Search can be configured to index the necessary Data Sources by right-clicking the Windows Search icon in the Start bar and selecting Windows Search Options. You can do Windows content searches on Windows reshares but the remote machine(s) must be in the same domain as the Gateway Server.

The Data Source's volume path must be a hostname or a fully qualified name in order to use content search on Windows Reshares. IP addresses are not supported by Windows Search.

Additional Configurations

Content search indexing can be configured to only index the contents of certain file types.

  1. On your server hosting the Gateway Server, open Control Panel -> Indexing Options.
  2. Select Advanced and open the File Types tab.
  3. Find the file types you wish to enable/disable content search for (e.g. doc, txt and etc.).
  4. Select the desired file type and under How should this file be indexed select either Index Properties and File Contents to enable content search for this file type or Index Properties to disable it. Repeat this step for all desired file types.

SharePoint

Entering these credentials is optional for general SharePoint support, but required to enumerate site collections. For example, say you have two site collections: http://sharepoint.example.com and http://sharepoint.example.com/SeparateCollection. Without entering credentials, if you create a volume pointing to http://sharepoint.example.com, you will not see a folder called SeparateCollection when enumerating the volume. The account needs to have Full Read access to the web application.