I can’t get to the article. Maybe it is taken out ________________________________ From: isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ball, Dan Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 11:12 AM To: isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isalist] Re: my experience with surf control 5.5 I ran into a very similar problem with SurfControl this afternoon. All traffic through the ISA server slowed to a crawl, then stopped completely. I rebooted the server, and waited about a half-hour for it to come back up, but it never did. Suspecting SurfControl, I brought it up in Safe Mode and disabled that service, then the server came up immediately. Contacting tech support shows that it is not an entirely unknown problem, and there is a hotfix for version 5.5 available that addresses high CPU utilization… http://kb.surfcontrol.com/display/1/articleDirect/index.asp?aid=2064&r=0.3462793 I installed that hotfix, and so far so good, I have my fingers crossed… ________________________________ From: isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ara Avvali Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 11:26 PM To: isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isalist] Re: my experience with surf control 5.5 Second post, No idea why characters are messed up but I thought it is worth the share. Sorry for duplicate I said let’s reboot the server one more time and see what happens. Web filter didn’t start automatically again and I got this error on email notifications: The connection between the SurfControl Web Filter and the ISA server has been lost. Oops that's not good and I didn't want to end up with a crashed server as you said. So I took your advice to go the way of reinstalling everything. Downloaded the new version of SQL express posted on their site. Then I uninstalled SC and remove the msde too. Rebooted and went to the program files folder and deleted SC and any sql server folder except the one for ISA (msfw). Rebooted again and ISA came up fine with no error also the SC filter was unregistered from add-in section. So this time I stopped ISA server control service which stops the firewall, routing and remote access and job scheduler service. Did the SQL installation (2005) and no problem. Installed SC and no error as mentioned in previous emails when installation fails to stop the firewall service. Then I stated services in opposite direction (server control service, firewall, routing and remote access and job scheduler). Then I rebooted the server and this time web filter stated automatically as it should. Recreating rules for me was easy because I only have 2 rules. Denied categories first and then allowed. No exception for any individual. Thanks for giving me the warning otherwise I may have been down the same road. ________________________________________ From: isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ball, Dan Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:18 PM To: isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isalist] Re: my experience with surf control 5.5 This was pretty much my experience, except that I also upgraded ISA at the same time… I backed up all configurations, then ran did the upgrade to ISA2006. I then upgraded the SurfControl program to version 5.5, and ran into the same scenario that you showed below. The install gave me an error message (same one below), but kept running after I clicked OK. Realizing that it wanted the Firewall Service stopped (and probably hadn’t installed the ISA plug-in correctly), I stopped the Firewall Service and did a repair install of SurfControl. I rebooted the server, and found that the SurfControl service was set to manual. I started the service manually, and it seemed to start up fine, appearing to work they way it should. I didn’t pay too much attention as to why it was set to start manually… I found out a couple of weeks later that the rules database was corrupt. When I made a change to the rules database, it knocked the whole server down in a matter of seconds. That was an extremely painful experience, took me awhile to figure out what was wrong. What made it exceedingly difficult was that the entire server was rendered useless, I couldn’t even log in via the local console. My suggestion: Re-install SurfControl as soon as you can, there is probably a lingering issue there that you don’t want to find out about the hard way. Backup all your configurations for SurfControl, uninstall it completely (delete anything left over), then re-install and restore your configuration. Apparently files are stored in a different location in version 5.5, which “might” be part of the problem. Once you get it back up and running, go through your rules (in every possible area) and look for any entries that say ERROR in the title. If you have any of those, delete all rules that are referencing those entries, delete the offending customization, and re-create it. ________________________________________ From: isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isalist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ara Avvali Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 2:10 PM To: undisclosed-recipients Subject: [isalist] my experience with surf control 5.5 Ok So I just want to share the story. I did re-image the server on another machine and logged in to it. Then I did an in-place upgrade from 5.1 to 5.5. It went smoothly telling me that it is going to upgrade rules and settings. Rebooted the server and registered filter for ISA was upgraded to 5.5. So I let it run for couple hours and checked on event logs and service status and everything was cool. Then I went ahead and did it on live server. This time damn thing gave me the error which is attached during installation. Then it was installed and rebooted. Upon reboot web filter service did not start automatically and I had to it manually but everything seems to be working fine and no nasty event so far. If I remember it correctly this error is related to the fact that SF can not stop the firewall service on its own so you should stop it manually before attempting the upgrade. I will post again for those who are interested. Just have to figure it out why the web filter service does not start automatically ☹