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I would like to connect my company's office with another remote office that is owned by us. Our office is in Europe and the new one is in the states . I'm an experienced sys admin However I've never done such thing before , therefore I'd like to get some better understanding at what I'm looking at and if it's not somethings I think I can handle, I'll get a contractor to do it for us but I'd still want to know what should be done even if a contractor will do it. It has to be an fitted enterprise solution as the company is quite large.
The two things I'd like to know are: 1)Networking - what's the best way to establish a site to site connectivity?( MPLS, vpn...something else? ) and recommended products. 2) How do I connect our two active directories together ? The new office doesn't have anything currently so I thought about spinning up an AD instance once the site2site is done , and setup the new AD as a domain controller in an existing domain? And the DNS should be setup as secondary - right ? Is that the right approach? Is there something else to be taken care of? ( other than dns/dhcp of course ).

Thanks a lot for the kind help!!

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  • Look into OpenVPN
    – Jason
    Sep 27, 2015 at 22:15
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    @FrankThornton Why?
    – ewwhite
    Sep 27, 2015 at 22:32
  • I've found it to be a very reliable choice. However, I meant to say pfSense which has OpenVPN built in.
    – Jason
    Sep 27, 2015 at 23:01
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    OpenVPN is great for mobile user VPN, but sub-par for infrastructure services. IPSec is the way to go here.
    – EEAA
    Sep 27, 2015 at 23:14

3 Answers 3

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1) unless you have tons of money and very high performance requirements, a site-to-site IPSec VPN is what the doctor ordered. I use pfsense for this purpose, but there are many options.

2) yes, add a new domain controller to your existing domain. Don't forget to create a new site (specifying the subnets correctly for each site), so that your AD clients can more easily locate their closest DC.

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  • Thanks @EEAA . 1) I have a few questions about the layout and design : - Should I get a separate line dedicated for the VPN connection? - Should I take care of routing in the form of all LAN traffic should go over the vpn connection, and the rest WAN ? - Is it best practice to have a backup line for the vpn connection ? BTW - Is setting up an MPLS better ?
    – John Doe
    Sep 28, 2015 at 8:45
  • @JohnDoe Those are all very broad questions, impossible to answer without knowing a lot more about your requirements. Don't bother with MPLS now. Implement an IPsec tunnel over the public internet. If you do that and don't end up being satisfied with the performance, then perhaps consider MPLS. I would highly recommend hiring someone to help you out with this. They'll be able to make sure you do things right the first time, and you'll learn a ton in the process.
    – EEAA
    Sep 28, 2015 at 21:24
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MPLS… with MPLS your Provider sets up a private Connection for you which usually just works. If we set up our own VPN-Tunnel, then we usually have at least doubled Speed - at much less costs. But we have to manage our VPN ourself which could be a Problem if on the remote site there is no experienced Amin...

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We solved this Problem with the free VyOS: http://vyos.net/wiki/Main_Page It's a router, Firewall and offers VPN. It runs on virtual and physical machines. Unfortunately, you'll probably need 1-2 days to understand and configure the system.

We have spent some more time and have an automativ Failover System - free out of the box.

If you prefer to buy a solution, we're also very happy with the Zyxel USG Serie because the Price is fair: http://www.zyxel.com/us/en/products_services/usg60w_60_40w_40.shtml?t=p%20VPN

VPN Tunnel Setup is fast and easy and you get professional Support.

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