When configuring Microsoft Always On VPN, one of the first and most crucial settings is defining the public hostname of the VPN server to which clients connect. If you’re deploying Always On VPN client configuration settings using Intune—either with the native VPN policy template or a custom XML profile—you’ll see that multiple server entries are supported. Intune even allows administrators to define a “default server.” At first glance, this might suggest that the client will try the default server first and automatically fail over to the others if it’s unavailable. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.
Intune VPN Template
When using the native Intune VPN device configuration template, administrators will find multiple entry fields for the servers in the Base VPN section.
In the example below, the Global VPN entry is marked as ‘default’.
Custom XML
When defining VPN settings using XML configuration, administrators can also list multiple servers.
Interestingly, the VPNv2 CSP used by custom XML profiles doesn’t support the concept of a “default server” at all.
How It Really Works
Defining multiple servers in the Always On VPN profile does not enable automatic failover. The client connects only to the first server in the list. The so-called “default server” setting in Intune is ignored, and the GUI even allows you to mark all servers as default, which is meaningless.
However, the configuration isn’t entirely useless. If you define multiple servers, they’ll appear on the client side as manual options. If the first server becomes unavailable, the user can open the Settings app, navigate to the advanced settings of the Always On VPN profile, and select an alternate server to connect manually.
Summary
Although Intune and XML configurations allow multiple VPN servers, Always On VPN does not provide automatic failover. Clients only attempt to connect to the first server in the list, and the “default server” setting in Intune has no effect. Multiple entries are still useful, but only for manual server selection by end-users when the primary server is down. For true automated high availability and redundancy, consider an external solution such as Azure Traffic Manager.
