Last week much of my time was spent in working out a riddle where we proposed a customer Forefront TMG as a solution for having an Internet gateway, This work used to be pretty much done by ISA 2006 as well, now Forefront TMG 2010 being its successor offer more and variety of features and options, however this post is not intended on comparing the two products. This environment just had to be developed for around 8 people office so it really doesn’t matter either we should go with ISA or TMG. The point was making them save cost and by offering them the most optimal solution.
Installing ISA 2006 on SBS 2008:
ISA was the part of SBS till 2003 Premium version but in 2008 Microsoft took off ISA from SBS so you can’t have ISA installed on SBS 2008 Server,
Installing Forefront TMG 2010 on SBS 2008:
Taking ISA off doesn’t meant TMG was supported in SBS 2008, again you also can’t have TMG installed over SBS 2008 machine.
Installing Forefront TMG 2010 on EBS 2008:
TMG was included as a component in EBS 2008, so by buying EBS 2008 you would get TMG for free but unfortunately EBS got discontinued and this option is no more viable.
Installing ISA 2006 on EBS 2008:
You were already getting the successor product (TMG) for free but since now EBS is discontinued as I mention above so this proposition also gets out of option.
So one can’t have TMG / ISA on SBS / EBS, now what’s the deal ?
Fortunately in the licensing options of SBS 2008 you have the opportunity of installing two additional Windows Server 2008 whose media comes along SBS. So you can go and buy SBS and TMG / ISA and rather installing TMG / ISA on SBS machine you can install on the other Windows Server machine whose license already comes with SBS. However detail and exact licensing requirement you need to check with your Account Manager at MSFT. This is one workaround and cushion available which I shared with you.
