Remote Access and Network Policy Server.
The Windows Server Remote Access role has been in the product since before there
was Active Directory. I came into the industry about 1996 or so, Windows NT 4,
and we had it back then as well. RAS, or as it used to be called RRAS, Routing
and Remote Access Service. And in Windows Server 2022, it's still around, and it
gives us the virtual private network, or VPN, capability, as well as
DirectAccess functionality.
Both of these are ways to allow remote workers a secure connection
into your corporate, private network environment.
The routing role service allows you to set up your Windows
Server box as an honest‑to‑goodness IP router. Particularly, you
can use Border Gateway Protocol, which is also called the
routing protocol of the internet.
This has particular import because BGP forms the foundation of the
site‑to‑site virtual private network with Azure, and in particular,
BGP supports dynamic route discovery and propagation.
And again with Azure, it unlocks the possibility of active‑active
tunnels, and redundant site‑to‑site VPN links, and so on.
And lastly,
we have the Web Application Proxy role service, and this is normally used in
conjunction with Active Directory Federation Services, or AD FS. But more
generally, Web Application Proxy allows you to expose a web application that's
running, again, privately on your internal network with a private non‑internet
routable IP and expose those for incoming connections from over the internet
or, at the very least, from outside your Active Directory environment. We'll
get more into the Web Application Proxy stuff in the next and final module of
the course.
In terms of Network Policy Server and Windows Server
and how this relates to Azure,
how it relates to hybrid cloud administration and the AZ‑800 exam,
we need to understand RADIUS. And if you don't know, RADIUS is an
industry standard network protocol. It stands for Remote
Authentication Dial‑In User Service.
And yes, I always get a kick at the dial‑in reference because I do
date back far enough to where I set up remote access connections
using analog modems connected to my Windows Server, RRAS Server
endpoints. Wow! It's been a while, huh?
Well now, fortunately we're not dealing with dial‑up, at
least I hope you're not dealing with dial‑up.
But anyway, RADIUS provides centralized authentication,
authorization, and accounting for those remote connections.
Yes, we can integrate RADIUS with 802.1X to do Wi‑Fi authentication.
We can do port‑based authentication. But in this context, we're
dealing with remote users who need to come into your corporate perimeter and access on‑premises servers.