Introduction to Remote Access Services
Is This for You? This document set is written to meet the requirements of information technology (IT) professionals who are responsible for the planning, design, deployment, and operations of an application infrastructure in enterprise, centralized, or branch office scenarios. The readers of this document set are expected to have an understanding of its technical details; however, service-level expertise is not needed to follow the enterprise-level discussions and to understand the decisions that are made.
On This Page
 | Introduction |
| Blueprint |
| Planning Guide |
| Build Guide |
| Operations Guide |
Introduction
In the current business environment, organizations are under pressure to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and maximize performance from the existing infrastructure. The growth of the Internet, together with new global business opportunities, makes it imperative that organizations provide secure 24x7 network access to employees and locations around the world. Two scenarios in which remote access is typically used are:
| • | Remote client access: Remote clients are usually single computers, such as home computers or laptops of employees who need to access enterprise resources while working at home or traveling. |
| • | Site-to-site access: Site-to-site access is used between branch offices and centralized facilities of the enterprise to access resources and data at different logical and physical locations. |
Both these key remote access requirements of an enterprise organization can be provided using a VPN. Both of these solutions require the underlying presence of either a dial-up connection or an Internet (shared) leased line connection.
Blueprint
This blueprint described the various options and technologies that can be used to enable either a client remote access solution or a site-to-site linking of networks over a WAN. The primary method discussed for achieving this was the use of VPNs, which can provide a secure and flexible solution for the enterprise. A comprehensive remote access solution can be designed by using the architectural guidance provided in the Network Architecture Blueprint and the service details provided in this blueprint.
Planning Guide
Remote access is critical in today’s business world. The CDC design provides a remote access service that is reliable and secure. Using a Window-based VPN at the CDC site and Cisco’s hardware VPN devices at the SBO site provides flexible remote access with low maintenance equipment that minimizes the cost of operations.
Build Guide
The remote access services in our scenario designs provide a vital service to both branch office and remote employees who wish to access the organizations data. The build guidance provided in this guide was created to provide a secure and reliable remote access solution in a manner that was both repeatable and proven. The test methodology and test tools that were used in testing the remote access services in the test labs demonstrate the proven nature of this solution. In addition, functional and load test cases are presented to show how the remote access services were tested in a lab environment. Finally, the test results are presented and analyzed.
Operations Guide
This guide helps the readers understand the extent of operations guidance that is available for remote access services discussed in WSSRA. This guidance has been tested in a WSSRA environment and the project team deferred to this guidance as the authoritative source of operations content.