Chapter 6: Monitoring and Reporting

Effective administration of Microsoft ISA Server 2004 requires the ability to monitor activities related to ISA Server services, user sessions, triggered alerts, and events. Reporting allows administrators to use of the information that ISA Server captures to help audit the computing environment and to make appropriate business decisions. In this chapter we examine each of ISA Server's monitoring and reporting capabilities. In addition, Chapter 18, "Configuring ISA Server with Microsoft Operations Manager 2005," focuses on extending your monitoring reach with the help of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and the ISA Server 2004 Management Pack.

Monitoring Components

ISA Server 2004 provides extensive monitoring above and beyond that found in previous versions of the software, as listed in Table 6-1.

Table 6-1: Monitoring Components

Monitoring Component	Description
Dashboard	Summarizes information about connectivity, alerts, services, sessions, reports, and system health in a single view
Alerts	Provides an overview of preconfigured or custom alerts, indicating events that took place
Sessions	Shows the number and state of sessions connected to the ISA server
Services	Shows the status of ISA Server services
Configuration Status	Shows the configuration version on each array member, and compares that to the version of the Configuration Storage Server (CSS) to which the current ISA server is connected; only available in Enterprise Edition
Reports	Shows the reports configured by administrators to show activities
Logging	Shows the traffic passing through ISA Server

ISA Server also records information in Events, which are logged in the Application Log in the ISA server's Event Viewer. You can configure Alerts to record information in this log. ISA Server Enterprise Edition also records CSS-related events in the ADAM (YourADAMInstanceName) log. For more information, see the ISA Server Help file.