January 9, 2008

History of ISA Server

if we look in past few year before coming of ISA2006 and 2004.ISA is known as a name of proxy server. The below mentioned are the different edition of ISA server
  1. Proxy server 1.0:- This was the first edition of microsoft isa server launched in January 1997.It worked but not up to the mark due to some limitations i,e It supported only a few basic Internet protocols and its implemented security tool functions were rather obsolete.
  2. Proxy server 2.0 :- This was the second edition of isa server launched by the microsoft in December 1997 with many useful and expected functions.One great application of this tool is to use Windows NT account databases. Therefore, user management within the enterprise has been considerably simplified. Many more protocols are supported, as well as caching services, packet filtering capability and considerably enhanced security performance have also been incorporated. Although it was an improved version.If you want to know more about this server you can click on below link
  3. ISA Server 2000 :- On the 18th of March 2001, Microsoft launched ISA 2000.This is the third edition of isa server in the market with some advanced feature. ISA 2000 introduced the Standard and Enterprise editions which ISA continues to ship under, with Enterprise-grade functionality such as High-Availability clustering not included in the Standard Edition. ISA 2000 required windows 2000(any edition), and will also run on window server 2003.
  4. ISA server 2004 :- On the 8th September 2004 this is the new and upgraded version from olders one ISA 2004 introduced with multi-networking support, integrated virtual private networking configuration, extensible user and authentication models, Application-Layer Firewall support, support for the H.323 protocol, Active Directory Integration, Secure NAT, Secure Server Publishing, and improved management features.ISA Server 2004 Enterprise Edition included array support, integrated Network Load Balancing (NLB), and Cache Array Routing Protocol (CARP). One of the core capabilities of ISA Server 2004 was its ability to securely publish Web servers. Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004 is available in two editions, Standard and Enterprise. Enterprise Edition contains features enabling policies to be configured on an array level, rather than on individual ISA Servers, and load-balancing across multiple ISA Servers.
  5. ISA Server 2006 :- The present version of ISA Server is ISA 2006, released on 17th October 2006. ISA 2006 is designed to run on the Window server 2003 and Window server 2003 R2 platforms (ISA 2006 drops support for Window 2000 .ISA 2006 is a stateful packet and application layer inspection firewall, VPN and web cache (both forward caching and reverse caching) server.
    ISA 2006 introduces a variety of improvements upon the previous version, ISA 2004, including support for authentication via Secure LDAP to multiple LDAPS providers or Active Directory forests, integrated support for Exchange 2007 (also backported to ISA 2004), support for publishing Microsoft share point, Single sign on, Cross-Array Link Translation, Web Publishing Load Balancing (with cookie-based affinity for Integrated NLBS) as well as variety of improvements to wizards such as a Branch Office VPN Connection Wizard, improved certificate management and Link translation.