The year 2003 was a big year for ISA Server 2000 and ISAServer.org! One of the biggest additions to the ISAServer.org bevy of articles and tutorials have been the ISA Server 2000 Deployment Kit series. In the last six months we’ve released comprehensive, step by step, highly graphical and easy to read deployment kits on a number of popular ISA Server 2000 deployment scenarios.

Just in case you don’t remember them all, here’s a quick reminder:

The ISA Server 2000 VPN Deployment Kit

ISA Server 2000 firewalls and VPNs are two great tastes that taste great together. If you're thinking about putting together a VPN Server or VPN gateway, then you should give serious attention to the co-located ISA firewall/VPN server combo. You'll save money and have higher functionality. It doesn't get much better than that!

The ISA Server 2000 Exchange 2000/2003 Deployment Kit is here! Answers to all your questions regarding Exchange Server publishing and remote access to Exchange Server services via ISA Server firewalls are found in the kit. Check out this article for an intro to the kit and download links.

In response to popular demand, we put together an ISA Server 2000 SharePoint Portal Server Deployment Kit. If you have a SharePoint Portal Server in production, or if you’re thinking about trying out SharePoint Portal Server, then do yourself a favor and check out the ISA Server 2000 SharePoint Portal Server Deployment Kit. I’m confident that you’ll cut many hours out of your troubleshooting time and spend less time on the phone with Microsoft PSS!

ISA Server 2000 is a sophisticated, intelligent application layer filtering and inspection firewall that can protect networks against the network attacks of today and tomorrow. ISA Server 2000 firewalls can be used instead of traditional stateful filtering firewalls or in conjunction with an existing packet filtering firewall infrastructure. ISA Server 2000’s application layer filtering and inspection mechanisms provide the ideal level of network security and protection for Internet facing Microsoft servers and services, and provide powerful protection as part of an unwanted email and network attack defense in depth strategy. Check out this ISA Server 2000 Application Layer Filtering kit and get all the details now!

We’re hoping to get at least four more kits up on the site in the next few weeks. They cover issues such as deploying ISA Server 2000 with Small Business Server, deploying ISA Server 2000 in a mobile environment and using ISA Server 2000 in educational institutions, and a really cool ISA Server 2000 branch office deployment kit. Keep your eyes open for these!

We received a lot of positive feedback on the kits from your email messages and Web board postings. Because of the amount of time and effort it takes to put these together, we’d like to get a little more information about what you think of the kits and how they can be improved.

If you can spare about 30 seconds, then that’s all the time you need to complete our short survey. When you complete the survey, your email address will be placed in the basket for a drawing to win a free copy of ISA Server and Beyond and one hour of free consulting time with me to help troubleshoot your ISA Server 2000 problems, using the RapidAssist remote access programs and the telephone.

Just head on over to http://www.isaserver.org/img/upl/kitsurvey/  to take the survey. Good luck and I hope you end up winning the free copy of ISA Server and Beyond and the consulting hour.