ISA Management Folders

Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000's Microsoft Management Console (MMC) ISA Management snap-in supports an Advanced view that groups the server products' configuration options in folders under each ISA Server system object. This view simplifies management tasks. Let's take a look at these folders and their purposes.

The Monitoring folder contains several subfolders. The Alerts subfolder contains alerts—short messages that the firewall logs in response to various conditions. The Services subfolder contains information about all running services and lets you stop or start each service. The Sessions subfolder helps you monitor ISA Server's current activity. The Reports subfolder contains ISA Server–generated job reports (e.g., reports about Web usage) that you can schedule.

The Computer folder lists any ISA Server systems that participate in an array with the selected machine. The Access Policy folder contains three subfolders: Site and Content Rules, Protocol Rules, and IP Packet Filters. ISA Server uses a combination of these rules to provide secure Internet access.

The Publishing folder lets you securely publish internal servers to outside clients. The Bandwidth Rules folder lets you enforce bandwidth restrictions according to protocols, destination address, and other factors. The Policy Elements folder stores preconfigured information such as IP address sets, destination sets, and schedule sets (e.g., a Work Hours set that defines users' work hours). You can combine access policies and policy elements to create flexible Internet enforcement policies. For example, you can create a destination set consisting of shopping sites such as amazon.com and bn.com, and create a Lunch Time schedule set that specifies users' lunch hours. You can then use these sets to permit user access to the specified shopping destinations only during users' lunch hour.

The Cache Configuration folder lets you configure ISA Server caching (i.e., what content ISA Server should cache and for how long). The Monitoring Configuration folder lets you define what action ISA Server needs to take in response to a specific alert (e.g., email an administrator when service stops). You can use the Extensions folder to configure DLLs that extend ISA Server's functionality (you must use the ISA Server software development kit—SDK—to write such DLLs). The Network Configuration folder governs how ISA Server routes requests, including how ISA Server handles requests to other proxy machines. You can use the Client Configuration folder to configure ISA Server Firewall Client software parameters.