Remote Access Server from Home

[G33kman]

So I have 2 Servers at work.

Server 1:

Windows Server 2008 R2

Mainly used for file sharing to all  of the computers in our office

Server 2:

Windows Server 2016

Mainly used by me to get familiar with the OS and whatever I'm doing

(This is an older server that we don't use anymore)

 

I do the website design for our company and I would like to start working from home but I want the files stored at the office so that I can always have the current version on-site.

I know that I could use a cloud solution like Google Drive but I would like to use that server so that I can access files that are stored on it when I need to from home for things other than the website as well.

I believe there's a way to remote access in but I am either having a worst case of the Monday's ever or I just don't know the correct solution.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

[Electronics Wizardy]

id vpn in. much more secure and then its like your working there.

[Droidbot]

set up a VPN in windows and port forward it or use RDP and attach your local disks to the session

[bgibbz]

 

 

 

[SecGuy]

You can use something like Hamachi.  Which is an easy solution to setting up a VPN to do this kind of work.  It supports 5 users for free and I don't believe it requires port forwarding in most cases.  I would do more research into it though.  

 

You also have another option which is more complicated, but it would also work.  You could use Git with a service like GitLab which gives you the ability to make private repositories for free.  And use git to keep the computer at the office and home synced up. 

 

You also have other benefits since git is a version control system.  I would use git regardless unless your company doesn't want you to. 

[samiscool51]

remote desktop connection is the best to use if you are getting used to windows server, as it's built into the operating system it's easier to use, but harder to setup for remote access, accessing it from within the network is simple, type the ip of the server into the RDC client

i don't use a VPN to connect to my server, i have a direct connection to my server via my public ip

not the safest i know but i have a 50 character password thats really hard to crack, also i have whitelisted certain ip's to access my server from outside of my network

so i should be safe

also you are prob wondering why i telling you this, so long as i don't give you my ip, you don't know where i live

simple!

[Pixel5]

9 hours ago, SecGuy said:

You can use something like Hamachi.  Which is an easy solution to setting up a VPN to do this kind of work.  It supports 5 users for free and I don't believe it requires port forwarding in most cases.  I would do more research into it though.  

 

You also have another option which is more complicated, but it would also work.  You could use Git with a service like GitLab which gives you the ability to make private repositories for free.  And use git to keep the computer at the office and home synced up. 

 

You also have other benefits since git is a version control system.  I would use git regardless unless your company doesn't want you to. 

dont use Hamachi, its a company Environment so you want some kind of control about what you are doing i guess...

[SecGuy]

12 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

dont use Hamachi, its a company Environment so you want some kind of control about what you are doing i guess...

Why not?  Provided the company allows it I don't see a problem with it.  It's secure, and easy to setup.  Sure, it might not be as customizable as setting up your own OpenVPN server but it's also not as complicated and still has the security associated with it.  

[Droidbot]

3 minutes ago, SecGuy said:

Why not?  Provided the company allows it I don't see a problem with it.  It's secure, and easy to setup.  Sure, it might not be as customizable as setting up your own OpenVPN server but it's also not as complicated and still has the security associated with it.  

Hamachi isn't that bad but it does go through LogMeIn servers and it's quite fiddly. 

 

[Mikensan]

Hamachi isn't always a direct connection, sometimes you traffic goes through their gateways to help bypass NAT/firewalls. Authentication happens on their servers. Not ideal.

With RDP a 50char password means nothing if you have other accounts that don't and are administrators. Nor does it mean much against 0 day exploits in the protocol. It's M$, there's constant zero days. Instead of a big password, better off using certificates.

 

Best method is a direct VPN. Whatever firewall/router/gateway you have at the business, probably has some form of VPN. Or you can setup the development server you have to host a VPN, or use OpenVPN. Or you could tunnel traffic through SSH.

 

Or you could use google drive / drop box, and you can actually point it to a live folder so you don't have to copy back and forth (assuming that is your intention). Dropbox I know at least has file versioning too, which is nice. Windows natively supports that through volume shadow copy services, but the little extra from drop box is nice.

 

My vote for simplicity... google drive / drop box, pointed at the target folder.

My vote for security... VPN/Tunnel (not hamachi)

[Klemppu]

1 vote for ssh tunnel. Works like a charm with RDP and is pretty easy to set up.

[ChalkChalkson]

19 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

id vpn in. much more secure and then its like your working there.

jup VPN is the best solution. I'd go with OpenVPN, but since you are using it professionally I do not know whether they expect you to pay for it

[G33kman]

Hey everyone,

Sorry it took so long for me to reply. I've been out  of the office. I will definitely look into some VPN software to use. Thanks everyone for your input! I have no clue why I didn't think VPN was the way to go that makes so much sense. Lol

[Guest]

Avoid a PPTP based VPN.

 

Have you considered using a filesync app or SFTP to simply get to the files?

[G33kman]

The SFTP solution did cross my mind but I was hoping to avoid that. I was hoping for something built into Windows Server (for some reason I thought something was built in for this) I'm sure SFTP would be simple enough to do and will have to look into trying that. Thanks.