Hello, and welcome once again to Implementing Always On VPN.
In this module, we're going to configure the VPN infrastructure.
Configuring the VPN infrastructure involves several different steps.
To begin, we'll deploy and configure our NPS server,
which will be used to provide authentication for our
user‑based Always On VPN connections.
Once that's done,
we'll move on to configuring the VPN server itself to support both
user and device‑based Always On VPN connections.
So the first server that we're going to focus on in
this module is the NPS server, and, of course,
NPS stands for Network Policy Server.
NPS is Microsoft's implementation of RADIUS, an open standard protocol.
We discussed all of that in module three.
And the NPS, as a reminder,
is used for authentication specifically to authenticate
users who are establishing a user‑based VPN,
or Always On VPN, connection.
Configuring the NPS server requires a number of different steps.
To begin, we'll provision the virtual machine and join it to the domain.
I'm going to assume that's already done.
I don't want to rehash those very simple and basic administrative tasks.
So in my lab and in my demonstration here,
those machines are already built and joined to the domain.
We're going to validate our certificate enrollment.
That's critical before we start moving on.
We want to make sure that our certificates are enrolled
for and installed in the correct stores.
We will then install the Network Policy Server, or NPS, role.
And technically speaking, that is NPAS.
The role is called NPAS, Network Policy and Access Service
role, but we we call it NPS for short.
And then finally,
we're going to configure our NPS policy to support user‑based Always On VPN connections.