[OPLINTECH] ISA Help

[Nathan Eady]

"Tyra Ealy" <ealyt at wtcpl.org> writes:

> Our old ISA server, Win server 2000/ISA2003, malfunctioned.

Well, the only ISA that I know anything about is the kind that's older
than PCI, which very few computers these days support.  I did a Google
search for ISA2003, but nothing that was obviously relevant turned up.

However...

> We have been able to restore services to our Main Library, but now
> our branches will not connect to anything.  

Define "anything".  Can they ping eachother?  Can they ping the router
at each branch?  Can they ping systems at your other branches?  Can
they ping well-known pingable IP addresses on the public internet?

We'd have a better shot at helping you if you could be somewhat more
specific.

> The network does not see our branches as internal clients.  They
> cannot connect to Innovative system, email or network shares
> internally.  It's like they cannot see the Domain, 

The way you capitalize the word Domain makes me suspect you might be
using Active Directory.  (This is just a guess...)

If so, is their primary DNS server set to a name resolver that accepts
automatic updates from the domain?  I believe ActiveDirectory requires
this.  Was the old server, by any chance, acting as an ActiveDirectory
Domain Controller and perhaps also as the ActiveDirectory nameserver,
before it died?  (If so, did it also have any FSMO roles that you need
to sieze?)

It's hard to know exactly what your problem is without knowing more
about your network setup.

> but we can reach them through PC Anywhere, ping, etc.  
> Can also ping from the branches back to Main successfully.

Ah.  If you can ping them, they *are* connected, at the IP layer.
Basic connectivity is not the problem.  More likely the server that
died was providing some service that you're trying to use (either
directly or indirectly).

If only we knew what services it was providing...

> We're thinking the problem lies somewhere in DNS, 

That's very possible, particularly if the old server was providing DNS
service (especially if it was acting as a recursive name resolver).
If so, you might need to adjust the TCP/IP settings on each
workstation to use the new server as the domain resolver, assuming it
is even set up to provide that service.

I'm sort of taking shots in the dark here, because your question
didn't really provide enough information for us to even know what your
*symptoms* are, much less the cause of the problem.  What *exactly*
are you trying to do, and how *exactly* is it failing?  If there's an
error message involved, the exact words of the error message,
word-for-word, would be helpful.  If there's no error message, a
description of how exactly you can tell it's not working would be a
good start.  For example, is it taking forever and ever to do some
particular thing?  What?  How far does it get?  And so on.

You mentioned email, but you didn't say if it was webmail, IMAP,
SMTP/POP3, webmail, or some other protocol that was "not connecting",
and you didn't say whether there was an error message or merely an
interminable delay.

You also mention network shares.  Are we talking NFS, SMB/CIFS, or
what?  How specifically do they "not connect"?  Do you get an error
message at all?  What does it say?

We also don't know whether you're using DHCP, which could definitely
have an impact on some of my above speculation.

-- 
Nathan Eady
Galion Public Library