How to manage multiple VPN types and connections?
I have been working with RDM for over a year now and it really makes my life easier.
Recently, I hired a new employee and the goal is to share the load. RDM makes it so easy to share customers and their various sessions, it's really great.
With one exception: VPN. VPN, at least for us, is a mess. With most VPN vendors, RDM does not support an automatic connection, either because it's not possible in the first place or because it's just not reliable, not to mention the creation of a new configuration which almost never works. Frankly, our experience with RDM has been so subpar in this aspect that we configure and run VPN entirely separate from RDM.
If I hired a new employee tomorrow, he'd be busy for 2 days just setting up all the various VPN connections we have to use. And then, for every new connection, all 3 of us would have to create a separate configuration. That's really far from comfortable and it will become even messier if more people should ever join us.
I can't help but wonder how others do it. Do you have any advice how we could improve on our situation? Mind you, we cannot reduce the number of VPN vendors. As a third party, this is never up to us, we have to use what's available.
All Comments (7)
Hello,
It's indeed a lot of work managing multiples VPN's to authenticate on different clients.
The scenario that I had in mind to avoid installing each VPN's on each technicians workstations, it's to install the VPN's on several dedicated VM's in your environment.
Then, your technicians needs to authenticate on the VM, open RDM from there and execute the VPN that they needed to.
When everything is done, they then disconnect.
It's a lot of preparation, but when it's done, no need to install the VPN's on each workstations individually since you have dedicated VM's to accomplish the work.
Best regards,
Jeff Dagenais
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for your input. I thought about doing it like this, too. The reason I didn't proceed yet is because I'm in a situation where I may have to connect to such a VM through VPN. And in several instances I noticed that establishing another VPN connection will disconnect the one I'm using to connect to the admin machine. Do you have any general advice how to solve this?
Best regards,
Vic
Hello,
Is your scenario that you are connected to your own office via VPN (because you work from home), then, you establish a RDP connection on the VM and start a new VPN from there?
On a side note, what type of datasource are you running? Is it SQL Server?
Best regards,
Jeff Dagenais
Hi Jeff,
Yes, that's exactly my scenario. And my datasource is SQL Server.
Thanks,
Vic
Hello,
Hummm, if establishing the connection disconnect your primary VPN when you are at home, it will indeed make it difficult to apply this solution.
At the office, no problem, but in pandemic working from home, it's another story.
However, what I understand, it's that you are working as a service provider for your clients (MSP). We may have a product that you would like to have a look at, which is WaykNow and WaykBastion. WaykBastion allow you to have your own server to centralize your connection to your client and allow you to connect on them without using any VPN's.
Please have a look at this product here https://wayk.devolutions.net/
Best regards,
Jeff Dagenais
Hi Jeff,
Yeah, that's what I thought.. Looks like we're back to square 1 then. :-(
As for Wayk, from my understanding, it works in a similar fashion like Teamviewer or Anydesk. I use the latter professionally already. Really, the biggest problem with all these tools is that you are bound to the host's resolution and number of screens. It's just a nightmare when with a 4K screen you connect to a HD host, and with servers, the resolution available is sometimes even lower. That's fine for quick and simple user support but to do actual work for many hours at a time, it's terrible. Also, file transfer often uses a server in the middle provided by the tool vendor which I don't feel overly comfortable with when it comes to confidential data.
So, that's not a solution, unfortunately.
Thanks,
Vic
Hello,
I don't have any other ideas for now. The pandemic makes it more complicated :(
As of now, installing all the VPN's on your local workstations seems to be the way to do it. Maybe you can try to build a script (like PowerShell as example) to help you with the deployment of the VPN's on your workstations. I don't have made any research to see if it's possible, but it's maybe something you can have a look at.
I'll keep in mind your thread, if I found something one day, I'll let you know.
Best regards,
Jeff Dagenais