Australia and New Zealand! Comparing DirectAccess and NetMotion Mobility free live webinar Thursday, November 29 at 10:00AM AEDT. Register here!
For many years, DirectAccess has been the gold standard for enterprise remote access. Its seamless and transparent operation improves productivity for mobile workers, and since it is always on, administrators enjoy improved visibility and management for their field-based assets.
As incredible as DirectAccess is, it is not without its limitations. For example, DirectAccess works only with Windows Enterprise edition clients that are joined to the domain. Professional Edition and non-domain joined machines are not supported. It also lacks many of the security features enterprise organizations require, such as device health checks and granular network access. In addition, DirectAccess communication is complex, with many different layers of encapsulation, authentication, and encryption. High protocol overhead can lead to poor performance over high latency or low bandwidth connections.
NetMotion Mobility is a secure remote access solution that is an excellent alternative to DirectAccess. It provides the same seamless, transparent, always on remote connectivity that DirectAccess provides, while at the same time offering much more in terms of features and capabilities. It supports a much broader range of clients, includes native Network Access Control (NAC) and application filtering, and offers enhanced performance.
To learn more about NetMotion Mobility, join me on Thursday, November 29 at 10:00AM AEDT (UTC +11) for a free live webinar with NetMotion. I’ll provide an overview of NetMotion Mobility and how it compares with DirectAccess. I’ll also demonstrate how it can help overcome some of the inherent limitations of DirectAccess too. Register today!
I’m pleased to announce I’ll be presenting at the upcoming TechMentor 2018 conference is Redmond, Washington. It will be held on the Microsoft campus August 6-10, 2018. I’ll be giving a talk on Windows 10 Always On VPN for DirectAccess administrators. During this session you’ll learn about the features and capabilities in Always On VPN, how to map existing DirectAccess functionality to Always On VPN, and how to provision clients using Microsoft Intune. I will also share implementation and security best practices, along with DirectAccess to Always On VPN migration guidance.
Register today with code RDSPK10 and save $500.00! I hope you’ll join me in Redmond this year for this exceptional learning opportunity. TechMentor provides in-depth, immediately useable education that will absolutely make your life easier!
Windows 10 Always On VPN and DirectAccess both provide seamless, transparent, always on remote network access for Windows clients. However, Always On VPN is provisioned to the user, not the machine as it is with DirectAccess. This presents a challenge for deployment scenarios that require the VPN connection to be established before the user logs on. For example, pre-logon connectivity is required to support remote logon without cached credentials. To address this issue and to provide feature parity with DirectAccess, Microsoft introduced support for a device tunnel configuration option beginning with Windows 10 version 1709 (Fall creators update).
Learn Windows 10 Always On VPN today! Register for an upcoming Always On VPN Hands-On Training class. More details here!
Prerequisites
To support an Always On VPN device tunnel, the client computer must be running Windows 10 Enterprise or Education version 1709 (Fall creators update) or later. It must also be domain-joined and have a computer certificate with the Client Authentication Enhanced Key Usage (EKU) issued by the organization’s Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
In addition, only the built-in Windows VPN client is supported for Always On VPN device tunnel. Although Windows 10 Always On VPN user connections can be configured using various third-party VPN clients, they are not supported for use with the device tunnel.
VPN ProfileXML
The Always On VPN device tunnel is provisioned using an XML file. You can download a sample VPN ProfileXML file here. Make any changes required for your environment such as VPN server hostnames, routes, traffic filters, and remote address ranges. Optionally include the trusted network detection code, if required. Do not change the protocol type or authentication methods, as these are required.
Once the ProfileXML file is created, it can be deployed using Intune, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), or PowerShell. In this post I’ll cover how to configure Windows 10 Always On VPN device tunnel using PowerShell.
Client Configuration
Download the PowerShell script located here and then copy it to the target client computer. The Always On VPN device tunnel must be configured in the context of the local system account. To accomplish this, it will be necessary to use PsExec, one of the PsTools included in the Sysinternals suite of utilities. Download PsExec here, copy it to the target machine, and then run the following command in an elevated PowerShell command window.
Another elevated PowerShell window will open, this one now running in the context of the local system account. In this window, navigate to the folder where you copied the PowerShell script and XML file to. Run the PowerShell script and specify the name of the ProfileXML file, as shown below.
To verify creation of the VPN device tunnel, run the following PowerShell command.
Get-VpnConnection -AllUserConnection
Note: In Windows 10 releases prior to 1903 the ConnectionStatus will always report Disconnected. This has been fixed in Windows 10 1903.
Server Configuration
If you are using Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016 Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) as your VPN server, you must enable machine certificate authentication for VPN connections and define a root certification authority for which incoming VPN connections will be authenticated with. To do this, open an elevated PowerShell command and run the following commands.
Using PowerShell to provision an Always On VPN device tunnel is helpful for initial testing and small pilot deployments, but it does not scale very well. For production deployments it is recommended that Microsoft Intune be used to deploy Always On VPN device tunnel.
Deploy Device Tunnel with Intune
Guidance for deploying an Always On VPN device tunnel using Microsoft Intune can be found here. You can also view the following demonstration video that includes detailed guidance for provisioning the Always On VPN device tunnel using Microsoft Intune.
Summary
Once the Always On VPN device tunnel is configured, the client computer will automatically establish the connection as soon as an active Internet connection is detected. This will enable remote logins for users without cached credentials, and allow administrators to remotely manage Always On VPN clients without requiring a user to be logged on at the time.
For many years, DirectAccess has been the gold standard for enterprise remote access. Its seamless and transparent operation improves productivity for mobile workers, and since it is always on, administrators enjoy improved visibility and management for their field-based assets.
NetMotion Mobility is a secure remote access solution that is an excellent alternative to DirectAccess. It provides the same seamless, transparent, always on remote connectivity that DirectAccess provides, while at the same time offering much more in terms of features and capabilities. It supports a much broader range of clients, includes native Network Access Control (NAC) and application filtering, and offers enhanced performance.
Windows 10 Always On 
