scandals of an ITian

Been thinking about writing a blog post about this for a while but found the same article here

Microsoft Forefront TMG – Best Practice Analyzer.

and here Forefront TMG (ISA Server) Product Team Blog Post

Whenever I make some significant changes to the TMG on our Essential Business Server at work , I run this to get a good overview of anything that I have missed.

Essential Business Server 2008 comes with Exchange 2007.

One of the most used features for EBS at work is the Outlook Web Access by our remote users. Of course it’s sometimes much more easier than opening Outlook first thing in the morning before heading to work to have a quick glance at your emails.

OWA works straight out of the box just like RWW on your EBS installation. But I have been having issues with users complaining about the following screenshot while opening contacts info at the top right hand corner of the window.

To fix the issue

1. Log onto TMG either from the Management box or from the Security Server
2. Scroll to the rule that Mentions the Outlook Web Access rule and right click and click on Configure HTTP as shown

   

3. At the bottom of the window is an option called “Verify Normalization” un tick the option as shown

   

4. Apply the changes to the TMG

   

5. Wait for the synchronization to complete which will be a minute or two depending on your configuration

   

That’s it!

Log back onto your OWA and type an users name and tada contact info

Cheers

Forefront Threat Management Gateway is the new revamped face of ISA servers which used to perform the functions of Edge Security gateway servers for networks. Its core functionalities include providing protection from WAN/Internet based threats and also providing means for secure Internet connectivity for Small to Medium Size organizations.

It is a critical part of the Essential Business Server package by being part of the Security Server.

One of the functionalities for Forefront TMG would be its reporting functionality which is able to provide either a :-

1. One time Report
2. Recurring Report

solely depending on the needs of the network administrator. There are also options around customized reports for:-

1. Summary Contents
2. Web Usage Contents
3. Application Usage Content
4. Traffic and Utilization Content
5. Security Content
6. Malware Inspection Content

On EBS 2008 you may come across the following problem when trying to generate a report.

To fix the issue open IIS Manager 7.0 and click on Application pool and select ReportServer$ISARS and choose advanced settings either from the right hand actions pane or by right clicking the option and choosing advanced settings as shown below

Under the advanced settings change the value for Enable 32-bit Applications from False to True as shown below

Close all the windows including IIS 7.0 manager. Once that is done go back to Forefront TMG and try to run the report as shown below

The generating report window will pop up next

Once that is compelted the report will open up inside the browser as shown below.

These reports can be configured to save on a network share or have it emailed out via the exchange server.