At the co-lo where my servers are hosted I have an older PIX firewall, it does a great job in terms of keeping things out. Without it I’m sure that I would need to put much more time in to securing my servers, but one thing it doesn’t offer is an SSL VPN. I’m told a shiny new ASA is out of my lab budget (says the CFO… aka the wife), so since I have been spoiled by the SSL VPN at work I had to look around to see what open source solution I could find…. enter OpenVPN-ALS – formerly Adito.
OpenVPN-ALS is a fully featured SSL VPN solution that supports a large proportion of the features touted by mainstream vendors today.
Features of OpenVPN-ALS:
– No limitations on number of simultaneous users
– Convenient remote access through Windows Explorer to shares using Microsoft WebFolders
– Supports Microsoft Outlook Web Access
– Web-based Microsoft Windows filesystem browser
– Access your desktop remotely
– Access intranet resources remotely using web forwarding.
– Integrates with your Microsoft Windows Active Directory account database
– Built-in database for user authentication
– Configure multiple profiles for access depending on your location
– Accessible using zero-footprint VPN client
– Connect using any SSL-enabled browser
– Supports access through HTTP proxy
The interface is very straight forward, the administration side takes some time to setup all the shortcuts but once everything is setup and you login as a normal user its fool proof (almost).
Ubuntu is the base OS for the installation that I did, and was fairly simple. My only suggestion is to make sure you use a 32-bit distro as I had some problems with 64-bit related to the Java Wrapper program they use. Overall I would recommend Adito/OpenVPN-ALS if you are in need of an SSL VPN type portable but don’t want to spend the cash on an ASA or similar device.
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