Excellent, Open-Source, and Affordable
What do you like best about the product?
I love that OpenVPN takes the complexity out of establishing remote connections and makes things super-easy, reliable, and a breeze to troubleshoot.
What do you dislike about the product?
Under macOS, I'd prefer the OpenVPN client to be baked into the operating system, rather than a separate user-mode application, so that connections can be established BEFORE login occurs.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Connecting to internal systems located in various parts of the world without the need for a Public-facing Internet connection
Recommendations to others considering the product:
The server portion is free and open-source, easy to implement, and the clients are mostly straight-foward, though may not fit your enterprise deployment strategy.
Very Secure, excellent Value!!!
What do you like best about the product?
That it's free, and more secure than older Cisco products using a <2048-bit key. Don't need any special hardware, and old server will do with a few NIC cards. I highly recommend from an admin/power user perspective, as you have an extremely secure & reliable VPN tool here that is self-healing and can work well in production environments on a shoe-string budget.
What do you dislike about the product?
User interface is very minimal, the Windows client has been improved but is a little confusing for some users since it resides in the system tray and relies on alt-clicking to connect, etc.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Network security and remote access. Site-Site VPN with no specialized hardware or monthly fees. Works well across multiple platforms, allows me to connect remote Mac clients, Windows 10, and even Linux all through one piece of software.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
It's not super user friendly but it works very well and is completely free. Hard to beat in the VPN segment, given cost/security/reliability.
Good VPN for small operations.
What do you like best about the product?
Low cost. OpenVPN is easy to configure and deploy.
What do you dislike about the product?
Special software package required on every OS(no native support).
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Secure tunnels for mobile productivity. Secure access to network resources.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Consider if open source software fits your requirements first.
Works fine for what I use it for. No problems.
What do you like best about the product?
I like that I can simply connect to the Open VPN. Once I'm connected I have no problem accessing our database remotely. It doesn't disconnect while I'm using it and it doesn't even seem to slow down the data base.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike that I have such a long password and that there doesn't seem to be an obvious option for having the password stored in the system. I save the password in MS Word and then have to copy paste it to connect. Seems like a waste of time.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
When I need to work out of the office and still access the data warehouse I use this tool. It allows me to be more flexible in my work location.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Works well. No hassle.
In combination with Sophos UTM SSL VPN
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to configure on mobile devices, you can easily just email yourself the ovpn file or if you have a tablet device, just browse to the UTM User Portal and grab it yourself. I haven't used OpenVPN with any other vendor except for Sophos, but if it works this way with other vendors then it is a great solution. Simple connection once installed with the automated configuration. While some do complain about it, I like that it prompts for credentials every single time you try to connect with it, but once connected you can stay on for days depending on the policy. Why is this important, because PPTP and L2TP/IPsec systems usually have a method to remember credentials. To me this a huge security problem, if a laptop was stolen, or breached, these credentials exist without any sort of effort by the criminal entity.
What do you dislike about the product?
Having to manually up the configuration each time a change is made on the UTM configuration, but it would seem there is no way to avoid that.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With Crypto Ransomware becoming more and more prevalent, and actively breaching Remote Desktop Services and other remote applications that SMBs and Enterprise organizations use, having a secured VPN is critical to keeping these resources private and removing the need for any sort of DNAT.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
If you need a reliable connection to your office network and you are running a Sophos UTM with UTM 9.x or even the XG Firewall SF-OS v16+, then OpenVPN is the product Sophos utilises for its SSL VPN. It is easy to deploy to users as they can just login to the UTM User Portal with their own Active Directory credentials (or local creds, depending on your auth methods) and download the full installer with their personalised configuration, or an update file if anything changes. The only downside is that this software/program will not run at time of login from a Windows laptop, so if you need scripts from a domain environment to run before or during login, this wont solve that issue.
Worked like a charm
Got this server setup in 15 minutes. Just don't forget to sudo -i on the server and "passwd openvpn" to create a password to login to the web UI.
let me check
I'll use it,vpn I want have one,ohohohohohoh ioshdads asdjfhasjfdh Not too short and not too long. Aim for between 75 and 300 words.
SSH Config Needs Help!
Finally got it working after 4 instance attempts. I could not log in to the Web UI because I didn't have a valid password. SSH configuration wizard doesn't prompt you to create password. Also I could only get it to configure with the default "openvpn" admin name. Name change attempts were rejected.
After initial SSH configuration is complete you must set the web UI admin password using "sudo passwd openvpn" command before exiting SSH session.
Good and simple VPN solution
OpenVPN was very easy to setup. There are not many options to adjust, but it comes with everything that is necessary to run a simple VPN setup at AWS. Installation time was 1-2 hours including client-side work.
We are using the clients for MacOSX and Linux and they worked like a charm. No problems so far. Documentation and software UI are quirky (hence only 4 stars), but hey: it works!
So far so good
Some bumps an bruises during the actual build. The instructions provided by openvpn were great BUT saying the passphrase was optional was wrong. I built the instance 5 times and generated the ppk at least that many before I finally tried setting a passphrase, which worked.
The config was simple and I was able to get the developer access quickly to our site. Those 4 stars could go to 5 with some time.
