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ISAinfo Forefront TMG 2010 Configuration Reporting Utility
With the demise of isatools.org a few years ago, many ISA Server and Forefront TMG 2010 administrators have reached out to me to ask where they can find the ISAinfo tool that was previously found on that site. If you’re not familiar with ISAinfo, it was a great utility used for viewing the ISA or TMG configuration by parsing the configuration export. This tool is tremendously useful for providing support, as it includes all of the information required to provide context for troubleshooting. In addition it is an excellent documentation tool.
So, if you’re looking for a reputable location from which to download this tool, look no further. I’ve placed the isainfo.zip file along with the checksums for file verification on my public OneDrive. Enjoy!
ISAinfo.zip – http://1drv.ms/1Q8GOaA
Checksums – http://1drv.ms/1Q8GWqq
Fastvue TMG Reporter 3.0 Beta Now Available
I’m a huge fan of the Fastvue TMG Reporter advanced reporting solution. If you’ve spent any time at all with the native Forefront TMG 2010 reporting tools, you know they are, as my British friends say, “rubbish”. While it is possible to configure Forefront TMG 2010 to log to an external SQL server and create your own reports, a better alternative is to use Fastvue TMG Reporter. They’ve already done all the hard work for you! Also, TMG Reporter from Fastvue works with TMG when configured to use an external SQL server, so you get the best of both worlds!
Recently the fine folks at Fastvue announced a sneak peak at their latest update to TMG Reporter in v3.0 Beta. This latest release includes a bunch of great new features, including the following:
- Site Clean – This provides a way to clean up a lot of noise from your activity reports by consolidating related requests (e.g. analytics and CDN requests).
- Private Report Sharing – Create a report for an individual or group and prevent them from accessing any other report data.
- AD Security Group Filtering – A must have for searching activity reports!
- Export to CSV for Reports and Report Tables – Great feature for detailed, granular data analysis offline.
- Filter by Firewall Server Name or IP Address – This is essential for enterprise customers managing multiple TMG firewalls across the organization.
The latest release also includes Gantt Bars for Activity Reports, changes to the Productivity Dashboard, inclusion of search terms in User Overview reports, an updated Alerts interface, and improved data visibility. In addition, v3.0 includes memory usage improvements and the usual bug fixes and miscellaneous minor improvements.
Be sure to download Fastvue TMG Report v3.0 Beta today!
Forefront TMG 2010 Computer Certificate Request or Renewal Fails
When attempting to request or renew a computer certificate on the Forefront TMG 2010 firewall, you may receive the following error message:
Status: Failed The RPC server is unavailable.
This occurs because the Forefront TMG 2010 firewall does not, by default, allow the protocols and ports required to request or renew a certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA). Common workarounds suggest stopping the firewall completely or creating a rule allowing all protocols and ports from the TMG firewall to the CA. However, both of these workarounds are problematic. Stopping the firewall is a manual process that will cause a service disruption. It also leaves the firewall in an unprotected state. For edge deployment scenarios, the underlying operating system will be exposed directly to untrusted networks, which is a serious security risk. Creating an open access rule is not desirable because it violates the basic security principle of least privilege by allowing more access than is required.
To properly address this issue and allow for the secure request and renewal of certificates without disruption and with the least exposure, it will be necessary to create an access rule on the Forefront TMG 2010 firewall to allow all dynamic ports (TCP 49152-65535) from the local host network to the IP address of the CA for all users.
Note: Allowing all dynamic ports (TCP 49152-65535) might also be considered too much access from the Forefront TMG 2010 firewall to the CA. It is possible to restrict the dynamic ports used by TMG and further tighten the access rule, if required. For information about restricting dynamic ports, click here.
In addition to the access rule allowing all dynamic ports, it will also be necessary to make a change to a system policy rule. To do this, right-click the Firewall Policy node in the navigation tree and choose All Tasks, System Policy, and then Edit System Policy. In the Authentication Services group highlight Active Directory and clear the checkbox next to Enforce strict RPC compliance.
Once these changes have been made you can now request or renew a computer certificate on the Forefront TMG 2010 firewall successfully.
Windows Azure Multifactor Authentication and Forefront TMG 2010
When Microsoft first announced Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication, a cloud-based strong authentication solution, my first thought was “I wonder if it works with Forefront TMG 2010?” Being cloud-based, my first thought was perhaps not. However, once I started digging in to it I quickly learned that it includes a software component that can be installed on-premises and will even integrate with on-premises security solutions via a number of interfaces, including RADIUS. Forefront TMG 2010 has supported RADIUS authentication for many years, so I put together a test lab and in no time at all I had Windows Azure multi-factor authentication working with Forefront TMG 2010 remote access VPN. Forefront TMG 2010 integrated with Windows Azure multi-factor authentication provides the highest level of protection for remote access users. Leveraging Windows Azure cloud-based strong authentication is extremely cost effective, with very low per user or per authentication costs and no on-premises hardware to purchase. The Windows Azure public cloud, which is ISO/IEC27001:2005 certified, provides the most secure and reliable strong authentication service available today. To learn how to configure Forefront TMG 2010 to work with Windows Azure multi-factor authentication, click here.
Forefront TMG 2010 Protocols and Ports Reference
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.
ESET Gateway Security Beta for Forefront TMG 2010
For security administrators looking to improve upon Forefront TMG 2010’s already strong advanced web protection features, leading anti-virus vendor ESET recently announced the beta availability of its Gateway Security for Forefront TMG 2010 software. ESET Gateway Security for Forefront TMG delivers advanced, gateway-integrated virus and malicious software scanning to provide comprehensive protection for web-based protocols like HTTP and FTP. ESET Gateway Security for Forefront TMG also supports SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 protocols to provide anti-malware and anti-spam capabilities for added protection. In addition, ESET Gateway Security for Forefront TMG 2010 includes host-based security for the TMG firewall’s underlying operating system, as well as automatic file exclusion configuration to ensure compatibility with Forefront TMG. ESET Gateway Security for Forefront TMG 2010 is fully compatible with existing ESET centralized management tools and supports Microsoft ISA Server 2006. Download the beta today!
Resources for Migrating from Microsoft ISA Server to Forefront TMG 2010
As Yuri Diogenes reminded us on his blog a few days ago, Microsoft ISA Server 2006 ended mainstream support on January 10, 2012, which leaves organizations without an extended support contract with no support for ISA Server 2006 at all. With that, planning a migration from ISA server to Forefront TMG 2010 has never been more urgent or important. To assist you in that endeavor, here are some resources that I’m certain you will find helpful:
- Why Upgrade from ISA Server 2004/2006 to Forefront TMG 2010
- Reasons to Migrate from ISA Server 2004/2006 to Forefront TMG 2010
- ISA Server 2004/2006 to Forefront TMG Migration Guidance [VIDEO]
- Migrating from ISA Server 2004/2006 to Forefront TMG 2010
Don’t wait! Start planning your migration from ISA Server 2006 to Forefront TMG 2010 today!
Forefront TMG 2010 Turns Two Years Old
Today marks the second anniversary of the release to manufacturing (RTM) for Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010. In the two years since its release Microsoft has provided two major service packs that have increased stability, improved performance and scalability, and also added some helpful new functionality. During this time the product also achieved Common Criteria (level EAL4+) certification. As we approach the end of mainstream support for Microsoft ISA Server 2006 SP1, now is a good time to begin evaluating Forefront TMG 2010 and to start planning your migration!
ISA Server 2006 Hotfix Rollup – September 2011
A hotfix rollup for Microsoft ISA Server 2006 is now available. The hotfix rollup resolves several reported issues with ISA Server, including:
KB2618727 – Users in remote forests cannot change their passwords through ISA Server 2006.
KB2620088 – Large files become corrupted during file transfer through the Socks v4 client.
KB2620076 – Outlook Web App clients are not timed out after the ISA FBA idle time-out is reached.
KB2620069 – ISA 2006 may crash with the error “DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (d1)”.
KB2622172 – ISA 2006 blocks published website requests for URLs that include carriage returns (CR) or linefeeds (LF).
The latest ISA server 2006 hotfix rollup can be downloaded here. After applying this update, the new ISA Server 2006 build number will be 5.0.5723.526.
Creating User Mode Process Dumps in Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010
In a recent post on his blog, Yuri Diogenes shared with us how to create a manual dump of the wspsrv.exe process in TMG by using the Windows Task Manager. This is tremendously helpful in many situations, but there are scenarios that require more flexibility. For this I use procdump.exe from Sysinternals. To create a dump of a user mode process, enter the following command:
procdump <process>
For example, creating a dump of the wspsrv.exe process would look like this:
procdump wspsrv
This will immediately generate a dump file called wspsrv.dmp.
Procdump provides additional flexibility by allowing you to trigger a dump based on specific thresholds. This is extremely useful when troubleshooting intermittent high CPU utilization issues with TMG. For example, if you wanted to create a dump of the wspsrv.exe process when CPU utilization reaches 90% for more than 5 seconds, enter the following command:
procdump –c 90 –s 5 c:\wspsrv.dmp
When CPU utilization stays at or above 90% for more than 5 seconds, a user mode process dump will be generated and saved in the file c:\wspsrv.dmp. This can be beneficial in situations where high CPU utilization prevents you from using the mouse or typing commands at the command prompt. Automating the task of capturing dumps based on triggers also frees the administrator from having to be at the console when the symptom occurs. Additional command line switches allow you to create multiple dumps, increasing your chances of collecting accurate data for troubleshooting.
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