Ok....I have Outlook Web Access (Exch2k3) configured using Form Based Authentication (FBA) on my frontend web server under the default iis site. The web address is https://exchange.mydomain.com.....works perfect. Now, I have a second iis site called SharePoint_Extranet. This site is accessible from the web https://sharepoint.mydomain.com currently using integrated windows authentication to access. This site uses a second IP address, with the different host header. When I implemented “Forms” authentication in the Central Admin page in SharePoint....I selected my extranet web app......and the problems began. Apparently, doing this stopped the OWA virtual server.....and now when I navigate to exchange.mydomain.com, it presented the SharePoint form instead....? Since these are production systems, I immediately reverted the SharePoint back to windows authentication, and started my Exchange virtual servers back up....and all returned to normal. My question is, can these 2 services both reside on the same iis web server using separate FBA? If so, how can I implement it without interrupting service? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm not sure what you did, but there is no reason you can't have two different websites on the same server that both use Forms based authentication. You need to add the provider entries to the Central admin and sharePoint.mydomain.com web.config files, but the OWA web.config should stay as it is. Then reference the provider name you entered in the Authenticationprovider settings for the sharepoint.mydomain.com web application. Setting up FBA for sharePoint shouldn't even touch the default website.Paul Stork SharePoint Server MVP

I am not sure what happened either...we didn’t anticipate that result at all when we implemented forms on SharePoint. Now....when I first made the change to use forms in the central admin under “Authentication Providers”, I did not yet update the web.config files. Could this be the reason that this happened? I know when we originally deployed the front-end web app to our web servers, it stopped the default OWA site. We figured this was due to both applications answering on same IP (and port 443) on the same server. We then went in and changed the IP and updated the host header information. We were then able to restart OWA successfully with no issues. The fact that it dumped it when we first set it up is what makes me think there is some connection here... For arguments sake....in this environment....if I did implement forms without updating the web.config files immediately.............would these results be expected? How can I get this going without interrupting the OWA site? I have been following this link: http://dattard.blogspot.com/2008/11/active-directory-forms-based.html Do you recommend another write up? We aren’t using any third-party authentication database....we just want to user our back-end AD... *Thanks for getting back to me!

Is your OWA site also using host headers? Once you put host headers on any site in IIS you really should use it on all sites using the standard ports (80 & 443). Host header confusion can lead to IIS refering you to the wrong website if all the websites aren't configured with host headers. Updating the Authentication provider in CA without updating the web.configs shouldn't really cause a problem unless you try to access the web site BEFORE you finish doing both. Having said that its normally best to edit the web.configs first. That's one of the things I don't care for about the blog post you are using. The other is that they are telling you to change the authentication mode setting in the web.config. That should normally be handled by SharePoint when you change the authentication provider. I like fellow MVP Andrew Connell's blog post on the topic. It's for a SQL membership provider, but other than the provider settings themselves its the same process. http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/HowToConfigPublishingSiteWithDualAuthProvidersAndAnonAccess.aspx Paul Stork SharePoint Server MVP

OK........got it! Still not sure why it crashed earlier. This time, I pulled SharePoint off 11 of my 12 web servers.....and just played with one to ensure I did not interrupt the OWA service. It did go down when I first deployed forms...but instead of going into panic mode and pulling back...I simply started it :) Now..I have FBA working! Turns out in that blog...there was a quote missing as well. It took me hours to find it...lol! Thanks for the help!