Year: 2008

Isolating problems that seem to be related to ISA Server– Part IV

Because I know how to use ISA Server I relate to it as if it were my favorite child. But customers who know ISA Server less well don’t feel this way, and usually put ISA Server in the wrong when they have problems that seem to be related to it.   I really like sniffers,…

ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 Features

ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 Features Introduction Microsoft® Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 Service Pack (SP) 1 will be available for your installation pleasure this summer! This Service Pack introduces new features and improved functionality for ISA Server 2006 Enterprise and Standard Editions. The new features focus primarily on enhanced troubleshooting mechanisms…

Another Look at Web Publishing. Part I: Host Headers without SSL

The purpose of this series of blog entries is to describe some details of Web publishing with the hope that by getting back to basics and taking another look at how Web publishing works, you’ll be able to create more efficient, error-free Web publishing rules with greater ease. In this post, I’ll try to explain…

Troubleshooting OWA 2007 Publishing Rules on ISA Server 2006

1. Introduction   Sometimes troubleshooting publishing rules can be really challenging. The main reason for that is because of the thin line between the published server and the edge firewall (in this case ISA Server). Where is it broken? Is my ISA Server not allowing the connection from outside or my published server that is…

ISA Server 2006 form base authentication problem using UPN logon format on a multiple domain environment

1. Understanding the Environment   The scenario that I’m going to describe on this post was based on a case where the customer’s need was really specific and the configuration of the ISA Server was restricted by the company’s hardening policy. The topology was similar to the one below:     Figure 1 – Lab…

Introducing a New Era for ISA Server

As my first (of hopefully many) contributions to the ISA Server team blog, I want to first introduce myself to the community.  My name is David B. Cross and I am the new Product Unit Manager for the ISA Server engineering organization.  For many of the community who do not know me, I have spent…

Understanding By-Design Behavior of ISA Server 2006: Buffering and Streaming Web Publishing Rule Content

Introduction   There are some customer issues that are caused because of ISA Server design or standard behavior that is not clearly understood. This article describes by-design behavior that occurs when you are using a Web publishing rule to serve content to external clients.   By-design behavior   By design, ISA Server 2006 buffers content…

IE 7.0 may fail to open FTP sites through ISA Server Web Proxy

Consider the scenario: 1.       IE 7.0 is configured as a Web Proxy client. 2.       IE 7.0 accesses an FTP site through ISA Server 2004 or ISA Server 2006 Web Proxy. 3.       The FTP url contains user credentials to authenticate to the FTP site.   Under this scenario, the FTP request may fail if the credentials…

Bi-Directional Affinity in ISA Server

The reason for having a network load balancing (NLB) Bi-Directional Affinity (BDA) feature in ISA Server is that it guarantees that traffic is handled in both directions by the same array server. This is very important and required if you have a Route Relationship (instead of NAT) between two ISA Server networks (for example between…