

Ask HN: Anyone deployed OpenVPN and wouldn't mind sharing their experience? - jtchang

Mostly if you decided to create your own custom app for deployment?
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RyanGWU82
I've done it twice, once in 2010 and again in 2012.

At the first company we had been using PPTP and L2TP for remote access but our
employees were having tons of problems establishing connections and staying
connected. Then we switched to the OpenVPN server built into our Vyatta
router, along with the standard OpenVPN client. This required a ton of manual
configuration on each client, but the connections were rock solid.

In 2012 I helped my new employer deploy OpenVPN Access Server, the commercial
version. This one didn't need the clients to be pre-configured. Instead our
employees went to a webpage, entered their LDAP username and password, and
then were given a download that would do everything. The automatic
configuration worked perfectly on Mac OS, Windows, and iOS. (I don't recall if
anyone tried it on Linux or Android, but I never heard any problems about
those.)

OpenVPN Access Server is ridiculously under-priced -- it's $10 per concurrent
connection. If your usage is typical, where most users only connect
occasionally, then you can connect hundreds of employees for under $1000. Even
if it was a lot more expensive, my experience was quite positive and I'd still
recommend this.

