Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning And Deployment

Introduction

It's 5:45 p.m., and in just a few sweet moments, you can finally finish the day's work and run out home. Suddenly, the phone rings, sending a shudder through your spine. You recognize the number immediately. It's Mr. McClueless from the downtown office, again. "Sorry, buddy," he whines, "my kids screwed up my computer again." Yeah, right! His "kids". Your stomach turns in protest, realizing you can kiss that planned steak dinner goodbye, as you're about to spend the next 2 hours walking the guy through setting up the VPN for the sixth time this month. If you only had direct access, you would probably be stuffing some serious sirloin into your mouth instead.

Well, it's probably too late to save this dinner, but direct access is so easy to set up now, that you can actually promise your boss (and by that we mean your wife, of course) that starting tomorrow, dinner will be served on time!

Hello Unified Remote Access!

Customer support can be funny, but remote access is serious business. Ever since the Internet came into our homes several decades ago, people have been using various solutions and technologies to connect to the corporate network, and work remotely. Many technologies came our way over the years; analog modem dialup initially, then ISDN, and most recently DSL, Cable, LTE, and WiMAX. Whatever connection type your users are using, virtually all solutions involve one thing in common: when the user needs to connect, he has to launch some kind of program to establish that connection. This inherent design has always been a burden, as users find various ways to mess up the connection (and let's face it...sometimes...rarely...it's not even their fault).

A few years ago, Microsoft came up with the concept that became known as Direct Access, and integrated it into Windows Server 2008 R2. The big deal was that finally, the connection configuration was configured automatically via Group Policy, so the IT department didn't have to set up each computer separately. Secondly, the Direct Access (often referred to unofficially as DA) connection was designed to automatically establish itself as soon as the computer leaves the corporate network and connect to the public Internet. With Direct Access, the entire thing was as seamless as a cellular service. The user goes home, opens his laptop and he is virtually on the corporate network. No software to configure and re-configure, and no buttons to push.