I am currently trying to evaluate Microsoft ISA Server and have a small test lab setup (no real internet connection). My question is, Is it possible to test the web publishing aspects of ISA without the need for DNS server(s). By this I mean that I only want to enter manual entries into the hosts file of each machine.

On the client machine this seems fine but I'm not so sure about the External and Internal Network Cards on the ISA server, since they will both share the same hosts. file will this cause problems in any way?

I welcome any comments anyone has..

Regards
Paul.

DNS and ISA are best friends...or at least ISA can't survive without DNS. You can visit www.tzo.com to get a temp DNS domain name for your lab if you want...works great!

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Eric Jansen
Independent Software, Inc.
MCP (MCSE 2K pledge), ICE, ICA

I have now configured two DNS servers (one internal and one external) and it still does not work!

The External DNS provides a resolution for my www.mycompany.com name, and this works fine on the "internet" client. The External Card of my ISA server also uses this same "External" DNS Server to resolve the www.mycompany.com and that works fine.

So far everything is fine! I then have two internal SecNAT web servers, lets call them web1 and web2, I have and Internal DNS server that has the internal addresses for these two web-sites and it happly resolves these names to the correct internal IP addresses as well. Again, all looks good.

I then created my two destination sets (e.g. www.mycompany.com /website1/* and www.mycompany.com /website2/*

Now in to the publishing rules section I create two rules one for each web server. For the first server I select the relevant destination set (www.mycompany.com/website/*.) and the action to redirect to the IP Address of my web1 server (if I put the name in I get the same problem, also the name never appears in the Browse selction box ... is this the problem, if so how do you change it as it defaults to the workgroup, my web servers are not in this workgroup?). I set the Applies to to Any Request. I configure the other website in a similar way.

When I then fire up the browser on my "internet" client e.g. http://www.mycompany.com/website1

I get a 404 error. So off to the website and put some debug info in the error page and yes its getting through to the correct server since the error page was "served" from the correct website. I'm onto something here I feel..

So a little more debug code in my asp error file for 404, this time to output the server variables, this way I hope to see what header info is being used and also what duff info ISA is passing to the website, guess what... not a single server variable ... hmmm, now I'm stuck ! I know its getting through to the correct server, but the path just doesn't work also I'm not getting any header information.

I am now comming to the conclusion that ISA Publishing does not work with Paths, has ANYONE got it working as per the Microsoft example, if so please let me know. That way I will know that I'm the one at fault, because from where I am standing ISA Server is a very explensive bag of .... IMHO !

Save my sanity ... please someone, prove me wrong!

Regards
Paul.

You are correct! ISA web publishing does NOT work with pathes. Don't you hate it when you've been banging your head on a wall to find out it's an ISA bug??

Ok, your destination sets MUST have FQDN's to your websites so that looks good (from what you posted). There is a bug in the ISA destination sets where IP addresses don't work. However, your web publishing rules MUST have internal IP addresses to web1 and web2...not pathes. Funny huh?

Anyway, get those set up, restart the ISA services and try going to www.mycompany.com/website1/ (notice the trailing slash) and wala! If you don't like the trailing slash, change the destination sets to reflect the change (I didn't like it and changed it).

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Eric Jansen
Independent Software, Inc.
MCP (MCSE 2K pledge), ICE, ICA