ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1: New features and enhancements
An overview of the new and enhanced features in ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1.
Many ISA Server Administrators waited a long time for the publication of ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1. At the time of writing this article, ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 is still not available as RTM, but as a Beta version.
ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 has many improvements on ISA Server 2006 and more new features than any other published Service Pack. The number of new features is so long that I personally call ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 – ISA Server 2006 R2.
The number of new and enhanced features might be the reason for the delay for publishing the next version of ISA Server 2006 – called Microsoft Forefront TMG (Threat Management Gateway).
ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 New Features
- Configuration Change Tracking
All configuration changes of the ISA Server configuration can be saved for later review. This will give administrators a better overview of what has been changed and if there are multiple administrators, who has changed the configuration. The Configuration Change Tracking feature can also be used as a Server checklist of what has changed in the ISA configuration.
- Web Publishing Rule Test Button
As most of your ISA Server Administrators know, the configuration of a secure Webserver Publishing rule with HTTPS to HTTPS or HTTP bridging could be an challenge, because many things have to be considered: you have to select correct certificates, name resolution is critical, and more. With ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 a new Web Publishing Rule Test Button has been integrated in ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 which should help you test created Webserver Publishing rules. ISA Server will then check if the Internal Server is reachable from the ISA Server side and outside the Firewall.
The new Traffic Simluator function in ISA Server 2006 is a great feature to simulate network traffic through ISA Server 2006. The Traffic Simulator will send simulated traffic through the ISA Server rules engine as real traffic would flow through ISA. The new Traffic Simulator could be compared with the Active Directory Group Policy feature called Group Policy results and RSOP (Resultant Sets of Policies). This new feature is wonderful for us ISA Server Administrators because it lets us quickly check if our rule sets work as expected.
The Diagnostic Logging query is not new to ISA Server 2006 because this feature was published in ISA Server 2004 Service Pack 3 but this feature will be enhanced in ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1. The Diagnostic Logging Query is a feature only for concrete problems related to ISA Server Firewall rules and should only be enabled for diagnostic purposes anfd after the problem has been resolved the Diagnostic logging feature should be disabled because it consumes system resources. The Diagnostic Logging query feature in ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 makes it easier to see only the data that is relevant to the current troubleshooting effort.
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