1

Hello,

What are your preferred choices nowadays to give remote users access to file shares? I’ve mostly used VPN or software like LogMeIn or Splashtop. But now I am seeing other options like ZeroTier, Synology Drive, or VeeamPN.

What do you all like to use for small offices (10 or less users)?

Thank you,

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2

what does the SMB have as firewall?

I usually give them the client for the UTM / Firewall and VPN that way.

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3

I am using Pritunl which is open source and quite easy to use. It has features for small and large deployments, and who can argue with the price tag!

4

It all depends on what machines are your users logging in from ? Are you willing to expose your corporate network to the malware (that may be residing on those machines) or Internet (if not properly configured or client machine is compromised) ?

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5

I’m on the side of Nealy above.

Nothing is more frustrating, than some remote access ‘thing’, that doesn’t work and forces you to visit the office on a Sunday morning, just to restart the remote access software.

Therefor an UTM firewall is a far better solution for me. If that (or the router) doesn’t work, you would have to visit the office anyways, but beyond that, you are independent of any 3rd party software and it’s problems.

And a business with more than 5 users, should nowdays have some kind of UTM firewall deployed, and not some home/consumer grade router.

6

If your firewall has the capability without cost, then best to use that I would say

Other options I have in use (in addition to the firewall client)

  • windows server VPN (RRAS), this is for extra users our firewall licensing doesn’t cover

  • Windows Remoteapps gateway is another good option for remote users which doesn’t rely on vpn

We use all 3 options depending on the users’ requirements

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7

I evaluated VeeamPN and it’s not really an end-user VPN product.

If you want a no-cost solution, look at SoftEther. It provides a very friendly GUI interface for managing anything from simple to complex VPN access. It’s an L2 VPN and eliminates a lot of the complex L3 routing requirements. It’s robust and flexible.

You’ll need a Windows install on which to run it. I haven’t tried, but I bet you could run it on a desktop system with two NICs.

https://www.softether.org/

8

Hi Robert,

I respect your opinion and you are light-years ahead of me.
Just curious, what didn’t you like about VeeamPN? I’m actually using it and seems to be a watered down version of OpenVPN with a quick 5 min setup. Except for one config file edit which I needed to do manually on linux, the rest was pretty straightforward.

I’m just trying to get feedback about any issues I’m not aware about.

Thanks

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9

A built-in VPN server hosted on your WAN router or firewall is by far the best option for those kinds of scenarios. Windows 10 integrated VPN L2TP client works flawlessly with all of them.

If a hardware-based built-in VPN server is not an option, I would recommend using a virtual machine running a VPN server of choice instead of Windows RRAS. I fully agree with MR2545 that VeeamPN is an excellent option Managed Backup for Businesses | Veeam . Compared to the rest of the free offerings on the market, this one has a very intuitive installation and configuration. A great short external overview and guide can be found here https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/veeam-powered-network-veeampn .

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