About Administration Scripting

Scripting allows you to use the ISA Server administration objects to access and control policies and configurations for any ISA Server computer within an organization.

ISA Server administration scripting has a number of benefits, such as saving time on tasks that are repetitive or need to be carried out on multiple servers. Administration scripting has other advantages:

Simplifies configuration changes:  With ISA Server you do not need to write code that stores or retrieves your configuration from storage because the Save and Refresh methods of the administration COM objects will write configuration changes or retrieve the last saved configuration from persitent storage for you. The objects thereby provide simple and comprehensive access to the ISA Server configuration.

Maintains consistency:  ISA Server object methods that set the values of multiple related properties with one method call will check whether the combinations of property settings are valid, and return errors if the properties are not set correctly. Consistency is maintained because scripts do not assign conflicting property settings.

Ensures that services receive changes:  Most ISA Server administration objects have a Save method that stores changes. The Save method has parameters for specifying whether the updated configuration will be reloaded and whether services will be restarted to apply the new settings.

Allows command-line and Windows scripting:  Microsoft Windows Script Host is a language-independent scripting host for Microsoft ActiveX® scripting engines. It allows you to run ISA Server administration scripts from both the Windows desktop and the command prompt. For more information about Windows Script Host, see Windows Script Host. For information about security in Windows Script Host, see Security and Windows Script Host.

Real-time administration:  You can create scripts that allow you to query and control the real-time state of your ISA Server computer.

Task scheduling:  Using scripts, tasks that must be performed on a regular basis can be scheduled to occur automatically. For example, you could create a script that would automatically back up configuration information.

See Also

Cache Administration, ISA Server Administration Scripting