What kind of license do you have? I just upgraded my environment from 6.5 to 6.7 but I used the custom ESXi images provided by Dell. You will want to do that for your brand of server. Make sure you start by upgrading vCenter to 6.7 first - if you have that.
@Dashrender said in Which Nas OS?:
I could have sworn that @scottalanmiller has been against at least FreeNAS - just use a Linux OS and manage the shares. What value does FreeNAS/ReadyNAS, etc add on top of Fedora/Ubuntu/CentOS, etc?
I haven't actually used FreeNAS yet but from what I can tell it has a nice GUI aimed at using the system as a NAS, similar to something like Synology with its DiskStation Manager. I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy way to do what you want to do - unless you're really good with Linux.
@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
Also are you using split tunneling on the VPN connection or is all traffic passing over VPN when connected?
I'm curious how this plays into the current conversation?
OP said he wanted to "make the best use of the remote session in terms of data transmission". It also plays into the security issue, together with credentials and logins.
aww - definitely understand the bandwidth portion, but not the creds/logins though.
Split tunneling is in general considered less secure because the user's computer is basically bridging the internet and your corporate network. And you have zero or little control over the traffic outside the VPN, unless you have some security in place for this.
When not using multi-factor authentication for the VPN tunnel (which the OP isn't) you are more susceptible to phishing attacks.
With split-tunneling and no 2FA on the VPN it's much easier to trick the users to enter their credentials into something that looks just like real thing.
That's how it ties into the security - overall risk.
Here are some covid-19 recommendations for VPNs.
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-073aMicrosoft have some new recommendations on how to do split tunneling VPN, particular with O365 and on-prem, to make it secure and to take load and bandwidth off the VPN connection.
Not related to security but it's also possible to have a bandwidth limitation in the VPN appliance without having a bandwidth limitation on the WAN link. There is usually a maximum VPN bandwidth in the firewall / VPN appliance.
We do split tunneling since it doesn't make sense to send/receive ALL traffic through the VPN connection. The connection is secure since we use our security appliance's specific SSLVPN application for users to connect through with specifically configured settings.
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
I wanted to figure out a solution for allowing the users to login to their company issued laptops and then click one or twice and get to their remote desktops as easily and as efficiently as possible.
You CAN make all or most of the credentials between that laptop and the resulting device be cached or saved. So that it is a really quick and painless process.
True but if a user's password expires or they change it, they may get themselves locked out. We try not to encourage saving passwords too much.
For security reasons, we avoid expiring passwords. That's what makes users write them down and make them easy to guess. Non-expiring, or rarely expiring passwords, are shown to be far more secure and make things like this much easier.
yeah I know its a balance. We have had a few trade offs between password length and expiration time
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
I wanted to figure out a solution for allowing the users to login to their company issued laptops and then click one or twice and get to their remote desktops as easily and as efficiently as possible.
You CAN make all or most of the credentials between that laptop and the resulting device be cached or saved. So that it is a really quick and painless process.
True but if a user's password expires or they change it, they may get themselves locked out. We try not to encourage saving passwords too much.
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
Then there are usually prompts between the SSLVPN and RDP steps such as SSL cert and other pop-ups. Yes they can check "dont ask again" but this all adds to the chunkiness of everything.
Those are problems that can be fixed, though. Those particular ones should not be like that.
ok disregard then.. not worth mentioning
@Pete-S said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
I don't understand how the use of RDP could do anything to cause multiple logins?
If you RDP in to your desktop using the same login as usual then everything is exactly the same as if you're physically there.
Login 1 : User logs into business issued laptop
Login 2 : User connects to company over SSLVPN using domain credentials
Login 3 : User connects to their internal physical PC via RDP using their domain credentials
On top of this, sometimes the company issued laptop is encrypted and they must enter a password (if there's no TPM chip). Then there are usually prompts between the SSLVPN and RDP steps such as SSL cert and other pop-ups. Yes they can check "dont ask again" but this all adds to the chunkiness of everything.
We also had some telephony/call quality issues (that I won't go into) but I will say that I'm just trying to find something that makes the best use of the remote session in terms of data transmission, so like RDP vs ICA or something. I'm not too knowledgeable in this area though.
I wanted to figure out a solution for allowing the users to login to their company issued laptops and then click one or twice and get to their remote desktops as easily and as efficiently as possible.
@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@dave247 said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
When you say things are clunky - what exactly do you mean?
If you are seeing performance issues - that could easily be your ISP connection at the office is saturated. How many users do you have VPNing in? what size pipe to the internet?
Clunky means users have multiple logins and other user-unfriendly aspects of using RDP. It would be ideal to have them be able to connect with a single login (or even SSO) and then have their desktop delivered to them quickly and cleanly.
Boy this is a lot to worry about for a temporary situation. I mean if you were looking to move to WFH in general, sure I'd care, but even for 60 days, I wouldn't spend the time or the money. But that's just me.
I'm trying to envision any of the other solutions being 'less clunky.' Sure SSO can help some, my office connects to several hospitals that have SSO, we still have to log into most systems at least twice - once into the citrix/webportal and again to an app on that portal (the app often being RDP inside that portal). Now some of the apps do work with the first login to the Citrix/webportal, but not all.
Well I mean who knows, it could actually end up being long term. It may be worth it if it runs through the year. Plus we may end up keeping some WFH users through all this.
@Dashrender said in Looking for solutions to allow remote users access to their internal psychical computers:
When you say things are clunky - what exactly do you mean?
If you are seeing performance issues - that could easily be your ISP connection at the office is saturated. How many users do you have VPNing in? what size pipe to the internet?
Clunky means users have multiple logins and other user-unfriendly aspects of using RDP. It would be ideal to have them be able to connect with a single login (or even SSO) and then have their desktop delivered to them quickly and cleanly.
We have fiber Internet where I work and the speeds are great and we only have about 30 WFH users and the pipe is only like 30% utilized. The main pain-point with anything Internet related would user's home network/wifi setup - which we don't control.