2012 Direct Access

[Quackers]

Before i swear any more at server 2012, anybody else had problems adding the Remote Access role to Server 2012?

Tried Direct Access few years back and got no where, but i believe its much improved in 2012. So thought right lets give it another go.

I add the role, it says failed as the server needs a restart, i restart it, and its not installed the role, so i add the role and it says failed because the server needs a restart, so i restart it, and its not installed the role, so i add the role and it says failed because the server needs a restart, can you see where this loop keeps going?

Add to the fact i still cannot find the restart option and having to do Start>Run> and typing shutdown /r just to restart i am left with a very VERY unhappy 2012 experience so far.

[caffrey]

not sure about direct access, but i'm sure the restart option is in the "charm" bar hover over bottom right and select power options.

[jamesfed]

Clean installed on Server 2012 - didn't need a single reboot

Are you installing on hardware or in a VM?

[Arthur]

Ignore this post.

[jamesfed]

Have you installed all of the other prerequisites?

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh922970.aspx

That's a 2008 R2 article........DA in 2012 is very different.

[Arthur]

Correct.

For some reason, I now can't find the link I was going to post.

[jamesfed]

So long as you have AD, DNS and DHCP setup and working there isn't much else needed - the RAS role install will configure everything else on the server.

Side note - if you need Windows 7 you need to setup PKI as well.

[jamesfed]

A few things that helped me setup DA in 2012-

'Real World' Direct Access installation using Windows Server 2012 - Canberra Premier Field Engineering: Team Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - how to set it up in the real world - includes a thing about setting up PKI.

UAG DirectAccess: Network Location Server (NLS) | Concurrency, Inc. - I did NLS like this article says and it works a treat, its a very important feature as if your NLS server goes down your PCs inside the domain will think they are outside...

The F5 Guy » Direct Access – Corrupt NRPT Fix - I suggest you TEST DA very carefully (single machine in a security group of its own) but if you break DNS on your client PCs this will help.

[localzuk]

I had this exact same problem - I got round it by doing a clean install and installing the role and features before doing anything else at all. Once it was installed, I then joined to domain, fixed the IP, named the PC etc...

[chazzy2501]

New Direct access issue. How to change the IE proxy settings? I use the swgfl proxy and they're set in GP for http and https. When a user is at home it's still trying to use the proxy and will fail. Does the DA server ignore the proxy? if I create an exception in IE this may allow the DA to work but the user will still be unable to surf the web. (I could use force tunneling in that case but I don't want all that extra traffic) How do I get the proxy settings to alter depending on the network I'm connected to? (without relogging in)

Remembering that some teachers will have a fresh boot at home and other will come out of standby (an still logged in) when they're at home...

[jamesfed]

We've got web proxy auto detect setup (through DHCP) - the proxy DNS address is set as an exception in the Direct Access DNS look ups so when the client reaches out to look for the proxy address its looking on the 'real internet' and so the lookup fails. At that point the client just uses the users home internet.