Accessing windows domain and active directory over the internet?

Hey, I'm new to Active Directory, and need some advice for my job.

We have windows 2003 server enterprise, one server with AD accounts and user's files. Our main centre is located here, where as our second centre is located in a different town to us.

What I am trying to do, is let staff from the second centre to access the domain and active directory from the main centre over the internet.

I'm not sure how to do this over the internet, so I would most appreciate it if someone could give me an "easy" guide to do this.

Thanks people, the reason I need advice from you is no one in the company has had training for Windows 2003 server or Active Directory.

Thank you

 

Use a remote connection to vpn in? It will then establish all the connections you need. Is it Small Business Server 2003? If so you can download the Small Business Remote Connection Manager right from the server onto a disk and just install it on each computer, each user can then login with his or her own credentials.

 

I have tried a VPN but for some reason I can't get it to authenticate with AD users.

 

Is it a third party VPN or is it the Windows provided one? It could be a problem with their settings on the server, They must be allowed to connect to the vpn in their settings on AD.

 

Yes the windows one. I have done that, but it just returns with an error saying that they couldn't be authenticated.

 

Can you provide me the EXACT error message? (verbatim) Could also be other problems such as your router not allowing VPN access, whether it just not be able to allow the certain protocol in, i forget the name of the protocol but it isnt supported by ALL routers, I had to purchase a new router for a company because it didnt not support the protocol. It could simply be ports being blocked on either side, (server side router or client side router)

 

i can't remember what the exact error message was, but it got to checking the username and password and just froze there for a few minutes then came along the error message?

 

do you think that next time you have a chance could you get the error message for me? in the mean time i would check for things such as ports being forwarded, and supported routers etc. The protocol that may be giving you the trouble is called GRE general route encapsulation... I believe this was what was giving us problems the first time and then it was some authentication errors, but other than that just check those things.

 

I managed to set it up the same way I did before, now it is working, but if I have anymore problems I will reply.

Thank you so much for your help

+Rep will be on its way

Thanks,
Nexopedia

 

anytime, im glad to help.

 

can I ask if you have any experience in VMWare, as I would like to virtualize this so I can basically set a machine up on the network to virtualize the VPN like the connection from the server over the internet (if you understand what im saying)?

 

so you want to use a machine as a gateway to the vpn... so the others in the remote office connect to this machine and then this machine just connects to the vpn which connects to the main server...but you want to use VMWare because you still want to be able to use this machine as a workstation?

 

basically i want to set it up to work like the connection we already have "server >>> internet >> client" but just make something like that on the network to emulate that type of connection.

EDIT: I just received the error message I was getting: (721) the remote computer did not respond.

 

Basically what I'm trying to say is I want a layout like this "server >> computer >> client" where the client would have to connect through the computer in order to connect to a VPN, and the client would also have to connect to the VPN to resolve the domain. Otherwise if the client isn't connected to the VPN the wouldn't be able to connect to the domain (but I would like this done on the same network for extensive testing without having to connect to a computer of the internet).


"server >> computer >> client"; user must be connected to 'computer' to access VPN, where the VPN host is the 'server' (basically 'computer' is an emulation of an ISP server), when client has connected to VPN through computer, the client can now setup a connection to the domain, but if client disconnects from VPN, the client will not be able to access the domain.

I hope I have explained what I'm hoping to achieve

Thanks,
Nexopedia