Remote access when on the road

So I thought i’d talk a little bit about remote access since I was just away on vacation for a week. There are a lot of technologies out there you can use for remote access, all of them promising complete access to your network while you’re on the road. I’ve always found adopting multiple technologies for a good comprehensive remote access strategy works well.

One of the easiest things to implement for the network administrator on the road is Terminal Services. As long as you own Windows Server you can purchase terminal services licenses to give you remote access to your network for multiple users. If you just want administrative access then you can just use RDP (remote desktop). However if you want extra control and power then I would suggest using a product like Citrix to achieve your goals. For the small business Citrix Access Essentials is a great single server product you can use to give you access to published applications and granular control over what users can access remotely. You can also combine this with the Citrix Access Gateway and give yourself SSL access to your network and everything integrates quiet nicely.

You can get more information regarding Citrix at http://www.citrix.com.

 -RP