ISA 2004 Enterprise Edition hits RTM... (And why is that special?)

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'nuff said! See https://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/ for more information.

March 1 is the general availability date, but there's a trial CD available for order now. The trial download's currently scheduled for March 1.

I'm still learning about the cool new stuff in Enterprise Edition, but if there's something you're specifically interested in, please feel free to ask!

[Update] OK, so the question was asked about what was actually new and improved in ISA 2004 (next time, I'll just say "ask me in a week").

What's New And Different In Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004 Enterprise Edition? And what does it mean?

  • Support for CARP arrays
    • near-linear scaling of cache size and performance, content is distributed across all array members
      • your cache size is increased by the size of the cache on each array member, rather than having N copies of the same content in each cache
  • Support for ADAM-based Configuration Storage Server(s)
    • schema extensions of Active Directory are no longer required
      • easier/less risk to deploy Arrays
    • can be resident on an ISA Array member, or on another computer - can be domain- or workgroup- based (and mixed and matched, at least to some extent)
      • can span AD organizational boundaries and still apply policy
  • Support for Enterprise and Array-level policy definition
    • Like ISA 2000, only, um, OK, a lot like ISA 2000 EE. But it's in CSS now, so it's better. Trust me*.
    • Set policy for multiple servers within an Array with Array policy
    • Set policy for multiple arrays within an Enterprise with Enterprise Policy
      • So: makes managing groups of servers easy
  • Integrated support for Network Load Balancing
    • Load balancing across NLB-enabled Array members
      • With monitoring of array members for easy failover
    • And BiDirectional Affinity
      • Allows a client to take a predictable "sticky" route in both directions through multiple load balanced interfaces (feature of WS2003).

More as I learn about it...