How to avoid logging images in Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004

In Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004, you can set up an allow rule for images and turn off logging images in this rule. To stop logging the image requests, you must put this rule before the rule that allows general access. This article describes how to create an access rule or a Web publishing rule to avoid logging images in ISA Server 2004.

To create an access rule that can avoid logging images, follow these steps:

1. Start the ISA Server Management console.
2. Right-click Firewall Policy, point to New, and then click Access Rule to start the New Access Rule Wizard.
3. Type a name for the access rule name such as Avoid Logging Images, and then click Next.
4. On the Rule Action page, click Allow, and then click Next.
5. On the Protocols page, click the All outbound traffic option, and then click Next.
6. On the Access Rule Sources page, click Add, and then expand the Networks node on the Add Networks Entities page. Click Internal, click Add, click Close, and then click Next.
7. On the Access Rule Destinations page, click Add, and then expand the Networks node on the Add Networks Entities page. Click External, click Add, click Close, and then click Next.
8. On the User Sets page, select the user sets, click Next, and then click Finish.
9. Right-click the Avoid Logging Images rule in the firewall policy detail pane, and then click Properties.
10. Click the Content Types tab, click Selected content types, click to select the Images check box, and then click Apply.
11. Click the Action tab, click to clear the Log requests matching this rule check box, and then click OK.
12. In the ISA Server Management console, click Apply to save your changes.

Note You must put this access rule before the rule that allows general access.

If most of the Web requests are for images, you may also want to avoid the logging of images for performance reasons, or to minimize logging size.

To prevent the logging of images in a Web publishing scenario, you must create a separate Web publishing rule to serve the images, and then click to clear the Log requests matching this rule check box. This mechanism only works if all the images are in a separate folder on the published server. For example, /images/*.