Unified Remote Access and Group Policy

If you have a modern Windows network, the concept of Group Policy is probably not new to you. For Unified Remote Access, this mechanism is very important, as it's the main delivery mechanism for URA configuration. While many commercial VPN technologies require you to configure the VPN settings on the client manually (at least to some degree), with URA, all this is taken care of by Group Policy.

To this end, the URA server creates a set of policies in your domain and these are defined for the scope of a special security group (or groups) that you choose. Once members of these groups connect to the domain, they receive an update to their Group Policy, which includes the various settings they require in order to connect. This is an extremely convenient mechanism, as the unpleasant experience of having each user configure his connection is no longer going to be part of your life. It also means that your users won't be able to simply erase their configuration or damage it. In fact, to do so, they will have to work mighty-hard! This is not to say that URA deployment is always problem-free, but at least that part is taken care of.

We will learn how to configure and deploy the policies in Chapter 3, Preparing Group Policy and Certificate Infrastructure. However, if you have never used Group Policy, now would be a good time to pull out those MCITP books (or MCSE, if you're nostalgic) and brush up on that topic. The article available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725828(v=WS.10).aspx may also be helpful.