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Archive for September, 2012

Forefront TMG 2010 End of Life Statement

September 12, 2012 54 comments

Note: This post updated on 4/22/2015 to reflect current information about the status of the Microsoft Reputation Service (MRS) after December 1, 2015.

Today, Microsoft announced the Forefront TMG 2010 product will be discontinued. Microsoft will continue to provide mainstream support for TMG until April 14, 2015, and extended support until April 14, 2020. The Forefront TMG 2010 Web Protection Services (WPS) will be discontinued on December 31, 2015. Beginning on January 1, 2016, Web Protection Service (URL filtering) will cease to function and the Microsoft Reputation Service (MRS) will be shutdown permanently. Virus and malicious software scanning and the Network Inspection System (NIS) will continue to operate but will no longer receive updates.

The end of life for Forefront TMG 2010 comes as part of sweeping changes made to the entire Forefront protection suite of products. In addition to ending development of Forefront TMG 2010, Microsoft also announced that Forefront Protection for Exchange (FPE), Forefront Protection for SharePoint (FPSP), Forefront Security for OCS (FSOCS), and Forefront Protection Server Management Console (FPSMC) are all being discontinued. Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE), which has been a part of Office 365, is being renamed Exchange Online Protection.

Looking ahead, Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) 2010 and Forefront Identify Manager (FIM) 2010 R2 both have current roadmaps and will continue to be developed, although it is likely that they will not continue under the Forefront brand name.

Forefront TMG 2010 Protocols and Ports Reference

September 10, 2012 5 comments

When deploying Forefront TMG 2010 as a forward or reverse proxy, many organizations will place their TMG firewalls in a perimeter or DMZ network to provide an additional layer of protection for their proxies. When deployed in this manner, configuring perimeter firewalls to allow proper communication to and from the Forefront TMG firewall can be challenging. Although the Service Overview and Network Port Requirements for Windows document on TechNet includes information about ISA server (which also applies to TMG) it includes all protocols and ports used by TMG in all deployment scenarios. This can be confusing when you simply want to allow TMG firewalls in a perimeter network to communicate with an Enterprise Management Server (EMS) on the internal network, or simply manage a TMG firewall in a perimeter network from a management workstation on the internal network. Opening all of the ports listed in the Microsoft KB article mentioned above would be unnecessary and would violate the principle of least privilege, which dictates that only the specific ports required for communication should be opened.

Note: This reference covers typical TMG configurations and may not include all protocols and ports required for every deployment scenario. For example, if you are using RADIUS or RSA for authentication, have configured connectivity verifiers or a remote SQL server, or have deployed Forefront TMG 2010 for Exchange integration, each of these configurations will require additional perimeter firewall access. Also, don’t forget that your perimeter firewalls will need to allow access to the protocols and ports required for the services you are accessing/publishing through Forefront TMG 2010.

For reference, here are the protocols and ports required for specific, common Forefront TMG 2010 deployment scenarios:

EMS to TMG

TCP 135, 10000-65535* – RPC
TCP 3847 – MS Firewall Control

TMG to EMS

TCP 445 – CIFS
UDP 445 – CIFS
TCP 2171 – MS Firewall Storage (domain-joined only)
TCP 2172 – MS Firewall Storage Secure (workgroup mode only)
TCP 3847 – MS Firewall Control

TMG to DCs

Domain joined…

TCP 88 – Kerberos
UDP 88 – Kerberos (send receive)
UDP 123 – NTP
TCP 135, 49152-65535* – RPC
TCP 389 – LDAP
UDP 389 – LDAP
TCP 445 – CIFS
UDP 445 – CIFS
TCP 3268 – LDAP Global Catalog

Non domain-joined…

TCP 389 – LDAP (required only for pre-authentication in reverse proxy scenarios)
TCP 636 – LDAPS (required only for pre-authentication in reverse proxy scenarios)

TMG to DNS

TCP 53 – DNS (send receive)
UDP 53 – DNS

Primary EMS to Replica EMS

TCP 135, 49152-65535* – RPC
TCP 2173 – MS Firewall Storage Replication

Replica EMS to Primary EMS

TCP 135, 49152-65535* – RPC
TCP 445 – CIFS
UDP 445 – CIFS
TCP 2171 – MS Firewall Storage – domain-joined only
TCP 2172 – MS Firewall Storage (Secure) – workgroup mode only
TCP 3847 – MS Firewall Control

Web Proxy Client to TMG

TCP 80 – HTTP (WPAD only)
TCP 8080 – HTTP Proxy

Firewall Client to TMG

TCP 80 – HTTP (WPAD only)
TCP 1745 – Firewall Client Control Channel
UDP 1745 – Firewall Client Control Channel
TCP 1024-65535 – All high ports**
UDP 1024-65535 – All high ports**

Management Workstation to TMG

TCP 135, 10000-65535* – RPC
TCP 2171 – MS Firewall Storage – Domain mode only
TCP 2172 – MS Firewall Storage (Secure) – Workgroup mode only
TCP 3847 – MS Firewall Control

*The default dynamic port range for Windows Server 2008 R2 is 49152-65535. When TMG is installed this setting is changed to 10000-65535. This does not apply to TMG EMS, however. RPC can be configured to use a smaller range of dynamic ports, if necessary. For more information, please see Microsoft KB 154956.

**The Forefront TMG 2010 Firewall Client is designed to operate without a firewall between itself and the TMG firewall. It is highly recommended that you avoid this design whenever possible. If this is unavoidable, all TCP and UDP high ports will have to be opened, as the TMG Firewall Client control channel utilizes random high ports and cannot be restricted as RPC can.