Tip of the Day: Direct Access deployment scenarios
Today’s tip…
Direct Access in Windows Server 2012 supports new deployment scenarios. Server 2008 R2 Direct Access had a single scenario for deployment which had the following requirements:
- 2 sequential public IPv4 IPs on the external interface
- 2 NICs: a public NIC and a private NIC
- Single Server deployment
Windows Server 2012 supports more deployment scenarios that ever before.
- Behind a NAT - Now DirectAccess servers can be placed behind an edge device that does NAT translation. In this scenario, the DirectAccess Server does not have a public IP.
- Single NIC - A variation of the Behind a NAT scenario.
- IP-HTTPS only scenarios - Eliminate the requirement for 2 sequential IPv4 addresses.
- NLB Scenario - Up to 8 nodes when using Windows NLB. Up to 32 nodes when using a hardware load balancer.
- Multi-Site - Allows Multi-Site aware clients (Windows 8) to connect to the most responsive DirectAccess servers depending on the clients geographic location.