I am planning to write an article about ISA Server 2006 for a computer magazine The testing will be documented in this blog. I had written an article about the first version, ISA Server 2000, and also about ISA Server 2004. ISA Server 2000 didn’t convince me, especially the user interface. ISA Server 2004 certainly was a major improvement. We are using it now as a firewall and will soon install two ISA Servers as web proxies.

Today, I installed the beta of ISA Server 2006 on my testing system with an ISA Server 2004. The setup program complained that I have the Firewall Client Share installed. After uninstalling it the setup program complained again that I need Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003. Eventually I succeeded upgrading the ISA Server 2004. As expected all my previous settings were transferred to my new installation.

Actually, at first I was wondering if I really upgraded because the user interface looked exactly the same as before. This is good news as I really liked the one of ISA Server 2004. There are certainly many new features, but I think the upgrade is not as significant as the one from ISA Server 2000. At least this was my first impression after reading about its new features. However, I am only at the beginning of my testing. So stay tuned!