| The capabilities described on this page are included in Appian's standard capability tier. Usage limits may apply. |
Portals are publicly accessible, but that doesn't mean they aren't secure. You control access to your Appian environment through service accounts. End users will only be able to access the objects and data that you give them access to through service accounts.
Additionally, portals have some other built-in security protections to keep your portal safe.
The web layer for Appian Portals implements denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protections to help make sure your portal remains available.
If a portal experiences an unusually high level of traffic, the DoS protections may be triggered. In the event that DoS protections are triggered, new requests to the affected environment may be blocked until the in-flight requests are completed or the high load subsides.
As a part of DoS protections, Portals also include web application firewall (WAF) protections, which protect against common web exploits and mitigate bots.
The scalability of your portal is how well your portal will perform when different amounts of users are using the portal at the same time.
Each portal automatically scales up and down to handle user traffic. This means that even with many concurrent users visiting your portal, the portal will scale to handle the load caused by users using your interface at the same time. Be mindful of what your portal connects to, as that may affect the overall scalability of your portal.
As part of an isolated architecture, each portal runs inside a service that is separate from the environment used to publish the portal. That service automatically scales up and down to meet user demand, independent from the platform.
However, there are some limitations to the scalability of the Portals UI microservice to be aware of. User traffic to your portal is limited to an average of 10 terabytes per month. By default, most portals will be able to handle up to 200,000 daily visits. If you anticipate exceeding these limits, contact Appian.
If you're connecting to Appian or other systems to query or write data, start processes, or provide documents, then the scalability of your portal is bound to the scalability of the Appian platform or system you're connecting to. When you're connecting to Appian, consider the expected usage of both your portal and platform when following the platform scaling guidance.
Keep in mind your expected usage and always test your portal at scale. Test all databases and web APIs connected to your portal to ensure that all parts of your portal are performing well and scaling effectively.
