1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:03,290 The core components of an Always On VPN infrastructure 2 00:00:03,290 --> 00:00:06,170 are VPN servers and RADIUS Servers. 3 00:00:06,170 --> 00:00:09,440 VPN servers are the primary component and they're used for 4 00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:12,740 terminating VPN connections from clients on the internet. 5 00:00:12,740 --> 00:00:16,620 The most popular option for VPN services is using Windows Server, 6 00:00:16,620 --> 00:00:19,240 and specifically, the Routing and Remote Access Service, 7 00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:20,250 or RRAS. 8 00:00:20,250 --> 00:00:23,940 RRAS has been around for many, many years and is quite stable. 9 00:00:23,940 --> 00:00:27,210 It's also the most popular deployment option simply because it's, 10 00:00:27,210 --> 00:00:29,440 it's just very easy to deploy and manage, 11 00:00:29,440 --> 00:00:32,420 it scales well, and it's very cost effective. 12 00:00:32,420 --> 00:00:37,720 There is no user licensing or per device licensing required for using RRAS. 13 00:00:37,720 --> 00:00:40,080 However, as I stated before, 14 00:00:40,080 --> 00:00:42,990 Always On VPN is infrastructure independent and you're by no 15 00:00:42,990 --> 00:00:45,400 means limited to using Windows Server. 16 00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:48,290 You can certainly use non‑Microsoft devices, 17 00:00:48,290 --> 00:00:52,210 such as VPNS or firewalls from Cisco, Palo Alto, 18 00:00:52,210 --> 00:00:55,640 Checkpoint, a variety of different vendors as well. 19 00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:57,740 There are some limitations associated with this, 20 00:00:57,740 --> 00:01:01,940 and we'll talk about those in detail a little bit later. 21 00:01:01,940 --> 00:01:05,080 If you plan to use a non‑Microsoft VPN, 22 00:01:05,080 --> 00:01:08,440 there is a couple of unique and very specific requirements to support this. 23 00:01:08,440 --> 00:01:12,130 First of all, you must use the native VPN client. 24 00:01:12,130 --> 00:01:15,320 This is the client software that's built into Windows, 25 00:01:15,320 --> 00:01:19,550 and of course, if you do this, you must use the IKEv2 VPN protocol. 26 00:01:19,550 --> 00:01:24,790 IKEv2 is an open standard and allows you to interoperate and integrate with a 27 00:01:24,790 --> 00:01:30,940 variety of different firewalls that are available to you. 28 00:01:30,940 --> 00:01:35,130 You can also use the plugin provider or plugin VPN client if 29 00:01:35,130 --> 00:01:38,300 your third‑party firewall vendor supports that. 30 00:01:38,300 --> 00:01:41,890 These are client software components that are available in the Microsoft store, 31 00:01:41,890 --> 00:01:45,760 and the advantage to using the plugin provider is that it uses TLS, 32 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:51,340 which is a more firewall‑friendly protocol than IKEv2. 33 00:01:51,340 --> 00:01:51,720 Today, 34 00:01:51,720 --> 00:01:55,740 there are a number of firewall and load balancer vendors that support 35 00:01:55,740 --> 00:02:00,740 plugin providers for Windows 10 and Windows 11 VPN. 36 00:02:00,740 --> 00:02:03,010 The second critical component for Always On VPN 37 00:02:03,010 --> 00:02:04,880 infrastructure is the RADIUS Server. 38 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:08,000 The RADIUS Server is used to provide authentication for our VPN 39 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:10,600 clients that are connecting to the VPN server. 40 00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:13,920 Here again, Windows Server provides probably the best option, 41 00:02:13,920 --> 00:02:15,950 certainly the most common one, and by the way, 42 00:02:15,950 --> 00:02:19,120 we'll be covering Windows Server exclusively in this course. 43 00:02:19,120 --> 00:02:20,170 In Windows Server, 44 00:02:20,170 --> 00:02:22,860 Microsoft's implementation of RADIUS is known as 45 00:02:22,860 --> 00:02:26,380 Network Policy and Access Services, or NPAS, 46 00:02:26,380 --> 00:02:28,540 sometimes just referred to as NPS, 47 00:02:28,540 --> 00:02:30,850 and we'll use that throughout the course to create 48 00:02:30,850 --> 00:02:33,040 our network connection policies. 49 00:02:33,040 --> 00:02:37,010 But here again, you're not limited exclusively to using Windows Server. 50 00:02:37,010 --> 00:02:40,970 You can use any non‑Microsoft radius server you choose as long as it 51 00:02:40,970 --> 00:02:44,280 supports the open industry standard RADIUS protocol. 52 00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:48,290 There are RADIUS server offerings available from a wide number of vendors, 53 00:02:48,290 --> 00:02:53,640 both commercial and open source that you can choose from. 54 00:02:53,640 --> 00:02:56,120 In terms of the Windows Server requirements, 55 00:02:56,120 --> 00:03:00,860 the VPN server, I would suggest using a minimum of Windows Server 2019. 56 00:03:00,860 --> 00:03:06,240 You can certainly deploy this on 2016 and even 2012 and 2012 R2 if you like, 57 00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:08,530 but there are some critical components that are available in 58 00:03:08,530 --> 00:03:11,470 server 19 or that were introduced in server 19, 59 00:03:11,470 --> 00:03:14,740 2019, that might be helpful to you. 60 00:03:14,740 --> 00:03:16,360 Domain‑join is optional. 61 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:18,850 If you're going to put it on a LAN, I would certainly recommend that, 62 00:03:18,850 --> 00:03:21,680 but if you want to put it in a perimeter or DMZ network, 63 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:25,780 I would recommend not joining that to a domain, and VPN server, 64 00:03:25,780 --> 00:03:30,080 or the RRAS services supported on both Server GUI and Server Core. 65 00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:31,700 I'm a huge fan of server core. 66 00:03:31,700 --> 00:03:34,240 I advocate for that whenever possible, 67 00:03:34,240 --> 00:03:36,710 but fully understand that not every administrator is 68 00:03:36,710 --> 00:03:40,070 comfortable or even familiar with administering a Windows 69 00:03:40,070 --> 00:03:42,160 Server exclusively from the command line. 70 00:03:42,160 --> 00:03:44,220 So in in our course here on Pluralsight, 71 00:03:44,220 --> 00:03:46,540 we're going to cover the Server GUI model. 72 00:03:46,540 --> 00:03:47,870 As for the NPS Server, 73 00:03:47,870 --> 00:03:51,640 you can run NPS on any supported version of Windows Server, 74 00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,710 it does require that it be joined to your domain because it's going 75 00:03:55,710 --> 00:03:57,830 to perform authentication against the domain, 76 00:03:57,830 --> 00:03:59,490 so it has to be able to do that, 77 00:03:59,490 --> 00:04:02,440 it has to be able to talk to domain controllers and whatnot. 78 00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:06,170 The Network Policy Server, or NPS, is supported on server GUI only. 79 00:04:06,170 --> 00:04:13,000 It is not supported on Windows Server Core, so you must run this on the server GUI version.