Windows – Automate setup of Win7 VPN, including registry settings and security policy changes

vpnwindows

After numerous difficulties I have managed to get a Windows 7 machine to connect to OSX Server's VPN. I am looking to automate the setup process for Win 7 clients, which would include:

add one registry key
change couple security policy settings
configure a VPN connection (import a VPN profile??)

First 2 items above are per OS X Server: How to connect to VPN service from Windows article.

Is there a way to automate the setup so it is a single operation that can be performed by the user as opposed to me having to walk through all the steps on every machine?

Best Answer

Here are some links on the Connection Manager to setup VPN connection and deployment to users.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc752995(v=ws.10).aspx

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2693643

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd672647(v=ws.10).aspx

Related Solutions

MacOS – How to fully export and import the VPN settings on OS X Lion

Well I found a thread here that seems to accomplish what you're asking. I can't put it any better than forum poster himself, so here's what he said in case the page isn't working:

I figured out a way to do this, so thought I would post for anyone following me that has a bunch of VPN settings and doesn't want to manually key them back in. You will basically have to copy & paste a few GUIDs to make your old prefs data match your new system. This worked for me going from one Mac OS X 10.6 SL system to another SL system. I would imagine similar steps would work for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and possibly 10.7 Lion. Here we go:

First, go to Network Preferences on your new machine and add VPN (L2TP), VPN (PPTP), or whatever VPN "interfaces" you need. Do not create any new VPN configurations at this time. Close Network Prefs.

Open System Profiler, select and copy to the clipboard the Hardware UUID from the Hardware tab.

Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost and find your old NetworkConnections prefs file. It will have the form of com.apple.networkConnect..plist. Make a copy of this file. Replace the portion w/ the one you copied in step #2. Don't forget to remove any spaces and the " copy" tag. You should now have a new file called com.apple.networkConnect..plist.

Open 2 files in an editor that can handle .plist files (I used TextWrangler): the com.apple.networkConnect..plist file you just made, and /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist.

In preferences.plist, look for the GUID of each VPN interface that you've created. The "UserDefinedName" string at the end of the key will tip you off:

<key>14A4B264-C231-41FE-857B-EE5557B69851</key> <dict> <key>DNS</key> <dict/> <key>IPv4</key> <dict> <key>ConfigMethod</key> <string>PPP</string> </dict> ... <key>UserDefinedName</key> <string>VPN (L2TP)</string> </dict>

The first long string ("14A4B264...") is the part you need. Copy this to the clipboard.

Now move over to your com.apple.networkConnect file. Find the key that has all of your old VPN settings for that VPN type contained w/in it. Select all of the key name (which is the GUID of your VPN interface on your old Mac), then paste to replace it w/ the new GUID.

Repeat steps 5 & 6 for each VPN interface you need. In my case, there were 2: L2TP and PPTP.

Save your changes and close the com.apple.networkConnect file. Close the preferences.plist file WITHOUT saving anything.

Open your Network Preferences, select your VPN interface(s), and you should see your past configurations.

Hope this helps you!

MacOS – Advised setup for: Parallels, Time Machine, Security, Windows 7, and MS Visual Studio 2010

Yes, all of this is relatively easily done, if you're using Mountain Lion (which is free for you if your MacBook didn't come with it pre-installed).

What type of disk?

Since the new MBA has USB 3, I'd recommend a USB 3 drive. USB 3 has more than enough bandwidth for any hard drive, and all but the fastest SSDs. There's a large selection of USB 3 drives, and they're far cheaper than Thunderbolt drives.

Hard drives will definitely be cheaper and offer far more capacity per dollar, but if VM performance is very important to you, an SSD may be worth looking at, and SSD prices have fallen sharply lately, below the $1/GB barrier. An SSD will have minimal benefits as a Time Machine drive however. Depending on your budget and performance tolerances, you may want to get a hard drive, see how performance is, and if you find it's not sufficient, get a small SSD for your VM and use the hard drive for your Time Machine.

VMs and Time Machine on one disk

To set up one disk to use for your VMs and Time Machine, you'll need to partition it. Apple has a good guide on how to do this with Disk Utility. Make one partition with sufficient size for your VMs (you'll want to leave some room for expansion of course), then a second one with the remainder of your space for a Time Machine.

Once Disk Utility has partitioned these drives, it should mount them on your desktop and ask if you want to use them for Time Machine. Answer yes on whichever partition you intend to use for Time Machine (not both of course). There should be an encryption option during the setup process. If you're not prompted to use either partition for Time Machine, you can manually choose a disk in Time Machine preferences. See Apple's Mac 101: Time Machine article for more details.

Encryption

When you create a Time Machine backup, it will give you an option to encrypt the partition. However if you don't do that, or if you want to encrypt the other partition as well, you can do this directly from the Finder. Just right click on the drives you want to encrypt, and choose Encrypt from the context menu. It will prompt for a passphrase (don't forget it!), and encrypt in the background.

I think that should cover everything.