Getting Started With Nodal VPN
Getting started with Nodal VPN
Introduction
Getting started with Nodal VPN requires only 9 simple steps.
We have broken these down into the logical steps you need to take. You may be able to skip some depending on your use case and server set up.
See below for links to articles that guide you through getting up to speed quickly with the service.
1. Download Appliance
The first step towards configuring a VPN server is to download and install the Nodal Community appliance.
Import the appliance into your preferred hypervisor and start the new VM up.
Alternatively, you can deploy using docker.
2. Initial setup
Once your VM has started, you will first need to set the console password as detailed below.
In a web browser, go to https://
3. Configuring a self-signed SSL Certificate
In order for the VPN Client to make a successful connection, we need to have a certificate that matches the hostname the client connects to. For production use, this should be a signed SSL certificate, but for testing purposes it is sufficient to configure a self-signed certificate.
Refer to the following article for the certificate setup.
Configuring a self-signed SSL certificate
4. Creating a VPN Network
Log in to the web UI using your new admin account. You will note that the UI presents some setup tasks you may wish to complete. Some of these tasks might be optional, such as connecting to an Active Directory. In those cases you can click Dismiss this permanently to make that notice go away.
One step you must complete though is to set up the VPN Network. Click the Create Network button here, then follow the article linked below.
A VPN network defines the IP range for your clients, the external address and what internal resources clients are allowed to route to.
5. Setting up your users
At this stage, you can now configure the users of your system.
Here you have a choice, you can either create some local users directly in your VPN tenant, or you can connect to your on-premise Active Directory using The Windows Connect service. It is also possible to have a combination of both as you can still create local users once you are connected to AD.
6. Client Configuration settings
Now we can review the Client Configuration.
A Client Configuration defines which IP ranges your VPN clients can route to and which users can use this configuration.
Creating the VPN Network above will have already set up a default client configuration, but you may wish to change some of the default settings.
Nodal VPN Client Configuration
7. Configure Authentication (optional)
The final step of configuration in your tenant could be to review your Authentication Policies. The default authentication will be to use just username and password, but if you wanted to add in any 2FA, an Authentication Policy is where this is done.
There are several Authentication Policies. a Default Authentication Policy for web UI logins, a Password Reset Policy, but most importantly for the VPN, there is the VPN Client Policy, which handles authentication via the VPN Client.
It is also possible to add multiple policies so you can define differing authentications for different groups of user.
To learn more about Authentication Policies, refer to the following article:
Configuring Authentication Policies for User Login
To learn more about the authentication methods that can be used:
Configuring Authentication Modules
8. Installing the Nodal VPN client
You can now start to install the Nodal VPN clients. Installers are available for Windows, MacOS and Linux systems:
Installing the Windows VPN client
9. Connecting a Nodal VPN Client
With the VPN client installed, all that needs to be done is to tell the client to connect to your new VPN system: