multiple VPN client on same machine

[dertt72]

Hi contributors !

We are a IT services company and we need to connect our customer servers for software maintenance purposes. To achieve this, we are using VPN clients software.
Each of our customers are using different VPN systems (Fortinet, Cisco, Juniper ...). For most of our customers we are not able to create permanent VPN tunnels (but we sometimes do).

Currently, when they need to connect to a customer, each of my colleagues are installing each different VPN clients on their own local machines... This is causing some troubles when : we get a new customer with a new VPN configuration, when a customer is changing it VPN technology, when we are changing our own PCs because we need to reinstall everything !!...

As soon as we now have a virtualization platform (VMware vSphere 6), I was asking me if we could create a Windows 2016 server virtual machine, installing each VPN clients on this Windows Server and then allow my colleagues to RDP this machine and then establish the related VPN client when they need to connect a customer server...

But the questions I'm now faced are the following:
1. Will the VPN clients be compatible to Windows 2016 server (You could tell me that I can check by myself, this is true ! but I'm asking the question just in case!)
2. Will Windows 2016 server allow to establish different VPN connections in different sessions without disturbing each others ?
3. Will it be possible to establish 2 different connection by using the same VPN client (for example if 2 colleagues are connecting to the same client but with different user or if 2 clients are using the same VPN client with different VPN configurations)...

I think this is not a typical situation so I hope this is clear enough for you! and, as you may have understood, I'm not a super-expert in this domain !!

Thanks a lot for all the help you could bring me !

David.

 

[bill001g]

VPN used by IT installations tends to be somewhat painful at times. It is actually much more advanced than say openvpn client a lot of home users use.

Part of the reason companies pay the big money cisco and juniper charge for their vpn solutions are the advanced features. I know we would check for patch levels and virus protection when the client started. It is also possible for example to look for other network connections and prevent them from being used.

So I am not sure if your plan to use a server will work. It depends on the client, many can actually detect when you have them run in a VM. It all depends if the client has restrictions that prevent you from running it on something other than the end machine.

Now if this was a more simple non proprietary vpn client I would say use a router. I know asus with merlin firmware image has the ability to run mulitple vpn and you can select via software which to use...you can actually send different traffic to different ones. Other third party router firmware has this feature also but it has been a while since I used anything other than merlin.

If I was a IT person I would not really want you using a router like this on my network because you could connect multiple companies together.

 

[failboat]

I can't answer all of your questions, but I do know each VM will be able to connect to a VPN.
They all have their own virtual network interfaces, so it's just like as if they were all physical machines.