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.