Book Image

Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning and Deployment

Book Image

Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning and Deployment

Overview of this book

DirectAccess, introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2, has been a ground breaking VPN-like connectivity solution, adopted by thousands of organizations worldwide. Allowing organizations to deploy without manually configuring every client and providing always-on connectivity has made this technology world-famous. Now, with Windows Server 2012, this has been made even easier to deploy, with a new friendly user interface, easy-start wizard and built in support tools.With Unified Remote Access, Windows server 2012 offers a unique way to provide remote access that is seamless and easier to deploy than traditional VPN solutions. With URA, the successor to DirectAccess, your users can have full network connectivity that is always-on. If you have deployed Windows Server 2012 or are planning to, this book will help you implement Unified Remote Access from concept to completion in no time!Unified Remote Access, the successor to DirectAccess, offers a new approach to remote access, as well as several deployment scenarios to best suit your organization and needs. This book will take you through the design, planning, implementation and support for URA, from start to finish."Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning and Deployment" starts by exploring the mechanisms and infrastructure that are the backbone of URA, and then explores the various available scenarios and options. As you go through them, you will easily understand the ideal deployment for your own organization, and be ready to deploy quickly and easily. Whether you are looking into the simplest deployment, or a complex, multi-site or cloud scenario, "Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning and Deployment" will provide all the answers and tools you will need to complete a successful deployment.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning and Deployment
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Server requirements and placement


The URA server role poses very few requirements, technically. To be compatible with the operating system itself, you need a 64-bit CPU running at 1.4 GHz or faster and at least 512 MB of memory. 32 GB of disk space are also required, and if your server meets this, you're off to a solid start. It's kind of a "duh", but we'll say it anyway; you need a network card. Beyond that, keep in mind that the server is going to have to do a lot of work accepting connections, encrypting and decrypting traffic, dealing with authentication, and more. Unless this is just a trial-run or lab environment, don't skimp on the hardware. It's not easy calculating the capacity requirements of URA, but in the following sections you can find some more information about capacity planning.

Something that may be of far bigger importance is the placement of the server. We already said you need a network card, and you need to make sure traffic from the Internet can come into the server...