Back from the rock: ISA 2004 SP2

With all the drama in the Microsoft partner world I seem to have been under a rock for the past week or so. Turns out Microsoft ISA 2004 Service Pack 2 was released last week! SBSers feel there isn't much in this one for them, I disagree: Support for BITS caching Think of this as the ghetto WSUS without reporting or policies. Basically ISA can now cache BITS traffic so if all your systems are using Windows / Microsoft Update you will not have to destroy your network connection by having each system download the patch. They will download it direct from ISA which will fetch it from Microsoft once. Very slick. HTTP Compression ISA can now fetch and serve compressed HTTP content from its cache. Think faster OWA. Well, think faster any-web-app-you-serve. I am not a 100% sure if this will automatically apply gzip to everything that goes out of the ISA cache. Traffic Prioritization You can set QoS on packets based on the URL they are going to. Let's say your main business is clearing stuff on eBay but your workforce just happens to spend a lot of time surfing around sports.yahoo.com. Well, add ebay.com as the first priority and sports.yahoo.com as the second and you've got your very own QoS. Check out the whitepaper for full details. Update: There is now a blogcast walking you through the installation of ISA 2004 SP2. Certainly check that out and RTFM before rolling it out. Susan also has a warning about doing this remotely although many are reporting it is not an issue.