With my new PKI and my Active Directory up and running it was finally time to integrate my OpenVPN into the infrastructure I build over the last couple of months. While I had an OpenVPN running for years now, it was not integrated into any central user database and relied entirely on password protected certificates to authenticate users.

For my new OpenVPN server I considered and tested the OpenVPN Access Server. That is the Commercial Project of OpenVPN, it has a very nice and easy web interface and it is very easy to integrate into Active Directory. I had a test VM set up and all tests went without a glitch. This is probably a very nice solution for most companies and the licensing fees are very reasonable. I was seriously considering to simply buy a couple of licenses and be done with it. In the end however there was some functionality that i missed in the web interface (or maybe have not found). Ultimately i decided to build my own solution since the paid version would not have saved me a whole lot of time.

Continue reading Building an Active Directory Authenticated and Managed OpenVPN Server Part 1 →