2/21/2001 -- Microsoft this week released its newest .NET product, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, which combines firewall and proxy capabilities into a single server offering. ISA Server 2000 speeds up Internet traffic filtering and adds centralized security management. It's available in two editions. The Standard Edition, for single-server implementations, is priced at $1,499 per CPU; the Enterprise Edition, for scalable security across an enterprise, starts at $5,999 per CPU.

Microsoft will release an exam based on ISA Server -- 70-227, Installing, Configuring, and Administering ISA Server 2000 Enterprise -- February 27, 2001. The Preparation Guide for this exam can be found here.

On the heels of ISA Server 2000's release is another .NET server product, Application Center Server 2000, which Microsoft released to manufacturing on Feb. 12. A "release to manufacturing" typically means general public availability of the product follows within two to four weeks. Application Center Server 2000 provides centralized management of Web and application servers. AppCenter Server does this through a combination of load balancing and clustering services, which allows for a high degree of fault tolerance for mission-critical systems. Application Center is $2,999 per CPU.

Microsoft says it currently has no plans to release an exam based on Application Center Server.

For more details on ISA Server 2000 and Application Center Server 2000, go to http://www.microsoft.com/Servers/. -MCPMag.com