Windows Server 2012 DirectAccess: Microsoft DirectAccess Comparison Table
With the impending release of Windows Server 2012 we will have our third iteration of the Microsoft DirectAccess solution. Life began with the DirectAccess feature coming to Windows in the first release of Windows Server 2008 R2 a few years ago now; it was then supercharged using Forefront UAG to offer a truly more achievable solution which was much easier to implement for many organisations given the improvements offered by the Forefront UAG platform. Now with the release of Windows Server 2012, we have the third generation of the solution which is fully featured and delivered as part of the native operating system. Given the impending third generation release, I thought it might be useful to prepare a DirectAccess comparison table to compare the different technology versions available, as shown below:
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Notes and small print:
Items in red represent significant improvement or changes.
1PKI is still mandatory for force tunnelling, Network Access Protection (NAP) integration or two-factor authentication deployment scenarios. A PKI-based solution is therefore still required for some enterprise-class deployments, dependent on the required features.
2Hyper-V failover cluster is required.
3Smartcard only.
4IP-HTTPS is supported, but there is a performance overhead due to combined/double SSL and IPsec encryption. IP-HTTPS in Windows Server 2012 now support null SSL encryption and additional optimisations but requires Windows 8 clients.
5Complicated setup due to IPv6 requirements.
6Global Server Load Balancer (GSLB) is required.
7Automatic DirectAccess entry-point detection or user selected entry-point requires Windows 8 clients.
8Technically works, but the supportability status is currently unknown (full support provided in UAG SP3).
9Read-only PowerShell.
10Command line via PowerShell only.
As highlighted above, Windows Server 2012 offers the most feature-rich platform when compared to previous versions and can be considered as a superset of the functionality provided by the Forefront UAG SP1 offering. Many of the enhancements included in Windows Server 2012 DirectAccess are based upon direct feedback from customers and changes to facilitate easier adoption and deployment of the technology within both smaller organisations and enterprise environments alike. I am planning on creating two upcoming blog posts which will highlight the changes and benefits in Windows Server 2012 DirectAccess from the perspective of the smaller organisation and then also for the enterprise space. Given the improvements and changes, I think DirectAccess will be even more popular than ever…what do you think?
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@itismeap - 2012/R2 are functionally the same. Null encryption is only available for Win8/8.1 clients and is enabled by default. Win7 clients will continue to double encrypt :( Null encryption is a default part of 2012 and doesn't need to be explicitly enabledAnonymous
April 02, 2013
Thanks for the blog post. I'm sure Direct Access will become much more popular. We have several customers for whom we have already implemented it on W2012 or at least have it planned.Anonymous
June 07, 2013
good stuff - the better VPNAnonymous
March 12, 2014
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 19, 2014
Hi Jason,
I am configuring the direct access on windows server 2012 r2. I am using the PKI and generated the certificate but at the time of configuring it shows Remote Procedure Failed error and configuration is rolled back. Can you please help us.Anonymous
July 08, 2014
The comment has been removed