Remote access for 'offsite' employees

[frase]

Hi All, Im not to familiar with remote access in the business perspective. So I was just wondering the following if anyone could please offer any advice.

• Remote access for 'offsite' users to MYOB [unsure of the current version]
• Network access 'offsite' to specific mapped drives[unsure at this stage if this is needed]
• There are only around 4 or 5 users via laptops offsite
• One dedicated system in office and another laptop.

As you can see it is only a very small mechanical business, so would it be best as not expensive or difficult for offsite user access. Sorry for the vagueness though I did not want to check their systems over until I lock in the contract with them. Remote Access is just a part of the maintenance contract that I thought would be beneficial for the staff. Would a VPN be good in this instance and wondering what are the most reliable resources available?

thanks

 

[phaZed]

Can't go wrong looking at setting up a VPN and the features that can go along with it. As for resources, do you mean educational/setup resources? Google is great.

 

[frase]

No resources I meant VPN services, though have just been fiddling about here and created a VPN in Win7. What are the features that you are mentioning?
A VPN on a win7 or XP system does not allow concurrent users which sucks. So far I am trying CISCO VPN and also ShrewSoft VPN clients.
Any other VPN options other than using Win Server?

 

[nextechinc]

pfSense running OpenVPN. Most of our clients are on pfSense and it is very stable, and very powerful.

 

[frase]

Thanks nextechinc, OpenVPN was the next thing I was going to look into

 

[uprighttech]

Take a look at an Untangle box. You can build your own or buy prebuilt and use it for VPN along with lots of other services like antivirus, web filtering, etc. Great Unified Threat Management edge device.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

"Remote Desktop Services" server.....what used to be called a Terminal Server.

Since you mention several remote employees....and a rather thick application called MYOB...I would not take the VPN approach unless this customers office has a really fast internet connection with 10 megs UPstream. More than likely it's 2 megs or less for upstream...it'll be a miserable experience to split that up across 3 or more remote users trying to run MYOB through that...adding to that regular office traffic. Most likely lead to a lot of databse corruption. Plus MYOB is very sensitive about netbios via its ODBC..it would be picky about the VPN setup.

 

[TenYardFight]

"Remote Desktop Services" server.....what used to be called a Terminal Server.

Since you mention several remote employees....and a rather thick application called MYOB...I would not take the VPN approach unless this customers office has a really fast internet connection with 10 megs UPstream. More than likely it's 2 megs or less for upstream...it'll be a miserable experience to split that up across 3 or more remote users trying to run MYOB through that...adding to that regular office traffic. Most likely lead to a lot of databse corruption. Plus MYOB is very sensitive about netbios via its ODBC..it would be picky about the VPN setup.

Stonecat, how complicated is this setup to learn, install and support? It's the same experience for the eu as remoting in to a workstation, right? Of course the benefit is that you can give them access even when a workstation is available. How is licensing affected?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Terminal Server is not too difficult....
End user experience just like remote desktop to a workstation.

Server license
Terminal server user CAL per user.
Assuming they already have a domain controller onsite.
A few steps to "lock down/secure" the terminal server so end users can't do much damage...

 

[frase]

Thanks for the info Yeoldstonecat, though that's the thing. As VPN on any other environment apart from a server environment would not be as secure or manageable. I have experience with a server environment, though have never actually configured one. So I think a VPN option would be insecure and would only create chaos in the end with the options I had in mind.

I always appreciate your input

 

[basic]

We utilize a CISCO ASA firewall/router and use the SSL VPN feature. It was fairly painless other than configuring the routing and port forwarding.