The last option that I want to talk about for deploying Always On VPN
infrastructure in Azure is the use of a virtual appliance.
A virtual appliance, or NVA, or network virtual appliance, is
available from a wide variety of security vendors.
And so again, as you'd heard me state at the beginning of this course,
Always On VPN is infrastructure independent.
It can work with non‑Microsoft platforms on the back end.
So, if you chose, you could always deploy solutions from your favorite vendor,
like Palo Alto, Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point.
There's a whole host of of appliance vendors that make virtual
appliances that are available in the Azure Marketplace that can be
deployed as software solutions in Azure, and they may serve quite well
as the back‑end platform for Always On VPN.
I'd encourage you to go back to the earlier lessons where we talked about
the requirements for third‑party VPN infrastructure, but at the end of
the day, they can be viable options for you.
I think the advantage to some of these solutions are that they are dedicated,
you know,
purpose‑built security platforms. The drawbacks, of course, is that
they're a little more difficult to implement and support.
But again,
this could be a viable alternative for administrators looking to
integrate Always On VPN using their existing platform of choice
or security platform of choice.
These are all excellent options, and there's a whole host of others.
You're by no means limited to any of these.
Just understand that, you know,
unfortunately, this course is really focusing on deploying
Always On VPN using the Microsoft stack, so we're looking at
all of the Microsoft solutions.
Unfortunately,
time just prevents us from going into these third‑party solutions with any sort of depth.