John Howard - Hyper-V and virtualization blog : Connection Manager Administration Kit for Vista

 

Connection Manager Administration Kit for Vista

Curiosity got the better of me. When I was analyzing why Hyper-V Remote Management didn't always work over a VPN connection due to DNS the other day, I mentioned that I wasn't familiar with the replacement technology for CMAK in Windows Server 2003.

Well, I found it (but it was surprisingly well hidden) - the replacement is.... CMAK, in Windows Server 2008. The details of it are squirreled away in the depths of the Technet Library under Windows\Windows Server\Windows Server 2008\Networking.

It turns out, CMAK is a feature built into Windows Server 2008 - dead easy to install using Server Manager, and it can create profiles for Windows Vista and older operating systems.

But I had to give it a try to see if it was possible to set the DNS suffix for a connection and ensure it was registered on the internal DNS servers when a VPN connection was established, thus ensuring Hyper-V Remote Management works correctly when on a VPN.

Sure enough, then you get to the "Create or Modify a VPN Entry", there is an advanced tab where the three fields needed are present.

Never having used CMAK before, I found it very easy to use, at least for a basic VPN configuration - no custom actions and so forth - those would have been a bit of overkill for a home setup. And did it work? Yup, perfectly :)

Cheers,
John.

John Howard - Hyper-V and virtualization blog : Connection Manager Administration Kit for Vista