Richard Hicks' Forefront TMG Blog

Keeping the base operating system of your Forefront TMG 2010 firewall up to date is vitally important to the overall security of your edge security solution. To manage system updates, many administrators will configure their Forefront TMG 2010 firewalls to use Windows Update or WSUS, or manage them using System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or another third-party systems management platform.

In my experience, SQL server running on the Forefront TMG 2010 firewall is often overlooked and commonly not updated. I believe this happens because updates for SQL server are classified as optional.

So, as a reminder, don’t overlook updates for SQL server on Forefront TMG 2010 firewalls or UAG 2010 servers! Using the Windows Update control panel application, select the option to install the latest service pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, which at the time of this writing is Service Pack 3. You can install the service pack directly if you choose; SQL Server 2008 Express SP3 can be downloaded here. After applying the latest service pack you can confirm that SQL has been updated by opening an elevated command prompt and entering the following commands:

osql -E -S .\msfw

select @@version [press enter]
go [press enter]

The output of the command should indicate that the installed SQL version is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP3) – 10.0.5500.0 (X64).

Note: Applying service packs and updates to SQL is highly recommended to maintain the most secure Forefront TMG 2010 firewall possible. Upgrading the version of SQL installed on the TMG firewall is not supported and definitely not recommended, so don’t attempt to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 R2 Express.