I have a question for those who are familiar with UAG DirectAccess.
I am very happy to see that Microsoft moved DirectAccess to Windows Server 2012. My compliments about the new features and performance. But I have my concerns about configuring NLB on it.
I recently started to install and configure two DirectAccess NLB Clusters (based on Windows Server 2012) on Virtual Machines. Where NLB can be easily configured on a UAG DirectAccess, I found that configuring NLB on a DirectAccess deployment based on Windows Server 2012 does not work flawlessly.
First of all, when you enable NLB, I find the DIP switch very unhandy. Ok, you can easily expand to NLB at a later stage without changing the public IP Address. But why doesn't Microsoft keep it like TMG, UAG and NLB itself? Second and more important, I am having a very hard time getting a second NLB cluster without troubleshooting. When I add another NLB node; one way or another it does not respond soon enough and results in having no NLB on the second node even though it is successfully added; NLB is not applied. I then have remove that node, re-add that node again and again. Sometimes it seems to work (with errors though), but I always have to troubleshoot and so on. So, configuring DirectAccess NLB cluster is really giving me a hard time. And I can tell you I have done dozens of UAG DirectAccess deployments without problems, which is easy.
It just doesn't work that well if you ask me. What is your experience/opinion?
Boudewijn Plomp, BPMi Infrastructure & Security