Tom Shinder continues down the SBS path

Recently I've had several calls from other consultants and users of SBS concerned about the installation and setup of ISA 2004. One great resource to help you in your quest is www.isaserver.org. Tom Shinder, author of several ISA books, actually uses SBS for his business. He's got a great series going on right now of how to install ISA the RIGHT way on SBS and what it does and doesn't mean as far as security from his standpoint. Check it out and subscribe to the RSS feed.

My take: ISA just plain rocks. Sure it may be a little finicky but the reports you get out of it truly are impressive. And the real time monitoring mechanism just plain rocks. In our monthly maintenance for our clients we give them a sample report from ISA Server and well let's just say that they are surprised from time to time at who is going where on the web. I'm always amazed at how many SBS consultants just plain shy away from ISA. Here is a $1000 piece of software that Microsoft is giving you with the Premium edition of SBS and you just let it sit on the CD on the shelf. What a wasted investment. If you haven't done it already, get the SP1 for SBS and use ISA 2004. You might just be pleasantly surprised at how it works!