View ArcSDE feature classes of published map service, when outside of corporate domain

Question

I have a notorious problem, which keeps bugging me since days and I can´t find ANY proper answer on the net...

In my company we´re using ArcGIS Server 10.1 and publish map services throughout our organization. We set up a bunch of ArcSDE geoDB on SQL, which are used to build the published MXD´s. It has the distinct advantage that we only have to maintain the ArcSDE´s, no re-publishing necessary after feature updates. And this works all fine as long as the client application is connected to our domain.

The problem starts when external clients want to view map services, which contain feature classes from these ArcSDE. Even though the map service is shared with 'everyone' and security changed to 'Public', it doesn´t work.

Is it possible to configure ArcSDE DB in a way that they are publicly available (outside the domain) or is this a problem of security settings on the ArcGIS Server side? Read a bunch of confusing things on ArcGIS SOC permissions, but really didn´t get that...

And I refuse to believe that this is not possible.

Answer 1

This is not a database issue nor it is an ArcGIS server issue. Your network folks need to allow the rest endpoint to be available externally either through a firewall exception or reverse proxy. There is no other way.