Windows 2008 Terminal Services Gateway

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One of the new exciting technologies that will be shipped with Windows 2008 Server is the Terminal Services Gateway. It is exciting not just because it will be used by many companies but because it can be used by many other technologists and make our life a little easier and more exciting.

I like to test new technologies and for my work sometimes I have to test or show different new and old products. I have 2 laptops, one is for my general day-day work with bunch of productivity applications and all required corporate tools, it runs Windows Vista. The second laptop is running Windows XP Pro with Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. It acts as the host platform to run different virtual guest systems - DC, CA, ILM, SQL etc etc. I use to carry both laptops on my trips because I needed access to my virtual environment to test certain things or learn new product. As you imagine carrying 2 laptops is not fun, it is heavy, it is pain to go through the security checks at the airports, requires extra space at any table...

So I've been looking forward to a solution that will allow me to keep my virtual network back at my house and have full secure access to it from any network that I have to be - it is usually 90% of the time at my client, or on my BlackJack 3G Cingular network.

Of course I could always leave my virtual network back at my house and configure my Linksys router to path port 3389 to one of the systems. What is the problem with such solution? None of the corporate firewalls allow outbound port 3389. So I could not connect to my home based virtual network via normal TS session.

So thankfully now we have a solution for this type of problem - use Windows 2008 Terminal Services gateway. It works over SSL port 443. Is that port open on corporate firewalls? You betcha it is. Now you can connect to you home network from any location via normal SSL port.

Next time I’ll write how I configured Windows 2008 Server Terminal Services gateway to get into my home network virtually from any location.

Dmitrii