OpenVPN Access Server Reviews

I have an accounting office and I am using OpenVPN to access customer networks. I am an accountant, so I installed a PSN for all my clients and they allow me to access their networks and accounting server to do the closing of accounting every month. I use OpenVPN to access the networks.

I would like to see continued advanced security implementation.

I have been using OpenVPN Access Server for the past five years.

The stability is very reliable in my experience.

I have found that OpenVPN Access Server is scalable.

I have not had to contact technical support at this point.

The setup is straightforward and deployed in less than an hour.

The price point is fantastic since it is free.

I would rate OpenVPN Access Server a nine out of ten.

We are a solution provider and the OpenVPN Access Server was one of the products that we used for our customers. It is used to create remote desktop connections into the cloud network, where people who are working from home can share resources with people in the office. When people are working in an office then they have a local network, and OpenVPN expands the network for use externally.

We are no longer using this solution because of complaints raised by our customers about security vulnerabilities. The server is now shut down.

This server allows you to connect to a network that does not have any public IP addresses. You first dial-up the OpenVPN to get onto the network, then directly use the private IP for the local device. Once the connection is made, we can do development work, maintenance, or whatever is required.

The most valuable feature is the remote connection capability.

It is easy to use.

There is support for multi-factor authentication.

We would like to be able to access the parts of the network that belong to other virtual LANs, which is not currently possible. For example, if an organization has different VLANs for sales, developers, and production, then we can only connect and view one of these segments. If you can access sales then you will have visibility of that particular subnet and not be able to see the developer VLAN resources.

The security needs to be improved because it was a complaint that our customers had. I'm not sure exactly what the specific issue is, other than they told us that it was not compliant with their organizational policies.

It is not possible to scale this solution horizontally, which is something that should be improved. They could allow multiple instances to run in different zones, synchronizing with each using a round-robin scheduler.

It would be great if they added intrusion prevention and detection (IPS/IDS) features. If they had these then there would be less need to use other products, such as firewalls. It would allow everything to run under one umbrella with centralized control.

We were using OpenVPN for about one year and we migrated away from it about three months ago.

Horizontally, this solution is definitely not scalable. Vertically, it is possible but there will be some downtime. Scaling requires that we stop the server, upscale it, select a different instance, and then restart it. The downtime is approximately five minutes.

I have been in contact with technical support and the experience was good. They have knowledgeable people.

We have migrated to Fortinet because of security vulnerabilities.

The initial setup is easy. Once we go to the marketplace for the license, we can install and start using it. This involves selecting an image, then selecting a VM, and deploying on that. You then install the certificate and create the users. Creating users is also easy to do.

 One person is enough for this task and it will take between 15 and 30 minutes to deploy.

Our in-house team deploys OpenVPN for our customers. After the deployment is complete, users will log in, download their profile, and then they can connect.

Before migrating to Fortinet, we looked at other vendors including Cisco. We found that based on the sizing we needed, the pricing of Cisco AnyConnect was not as competitive.

Personally, I have not found any differences between these products that affect what I need to do.

Personally, I like this product and our decision to shut down the server is in response to decisions made by our customers. I have not found any issues with it, myself.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It allows us to give access to our office network in a safe and secure way to users, no matter which computing platform they use. 

1. Easy to set up.
2. Clients for multiple platforms
3. It runs on Linux.
4. It allows for two-factor authentication. 

This makes it very easy to administer if it is running on a Linux server where you can do everything over CLI or a web-based interface. Some software only has clients for MAC and Windows, which is annoying. Two-factor authentication allows us to not force frequent password changes.

There was one annoying feature where we had to disable and enable the user. I cannot remember what it was exactly, but I think it was for a password lockout. It would be nice if there was a checkbox, or something, in the web interface to allow you to unlock a user whose password was locked. 

No issues. It is solid as a rock.

Never.

I do not think we ever had to use technical support. I mainly found answers on the web forums.

No.

It was already set up when I got there. 

However, I have set up OpenVPN elsewhere. The initial setup is very straightforward as long as you understand something about the way the OS works, and how the networking and certificates work.

Not applicable.

It is good stuff.

We primarily use the solution for a secure VPN connection.

Overall, it's okay and performance-wise it's fine.

It is easy to set up.

The solution is stable.

It can scale well. 

It is open-source and free to use. 

The performance could be a bit better. The stability could always be enhanced. 

When there are too many concurrent users trying to connect at the same time, there may be a bit of a bottleneck. When all people would like to reconnect to the VPN at the same time, the performance and availability of the solution could be better.

I've been using the solution for almost a year.

The solution is quite stable and has okay performance. However, it could be better. We'd like the performance to be more robust.

It's a scalable product. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

We have around 2,000 users on the solution right now. 

We're always open to increasing usage. 

I haven't dealt with technical support just yet. I can't speak to how helpful they would be. 

We did not previously use a different solution. 

With OpenVPN, the amount of people you need to deploy and maintain it depends on how many nodes you would need and the number of users as well as whether you are operating 24/7 or operating only during work hours. Likely, you would need between three and six people.

This is an open-source solution. We can use it for free. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users and organizations. 

I would rate the product eight out of ten as I have been mostly pleased with its capabilities. 

We use the solution to access remote services. 

I want the tool to be faster. We have experienced connectivity issues while using OpenVPN and FortiClient. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

The tool is stable and I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The tool is not scalable. We have two users for the product. 

The tool's setup is complex. The product's deployment takes 30 minutes to complete. We followed the tool's documentation to complete the setup. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. You need to study the solution's documentation and get familiar with it before implementing the tool in your organization. 

I primarily use Open VPN Access Server as a remote-access VPN to log into our infrastructure.

Open VPN Access Server could be more user-friendly.

I've been using Open VPN Access Server for three years.

Open VPN Access Server is fully stable.

Open VPN Access Server is scalable.

The initial setup was easy.

Open VPN Access Server is open-source and free of charge.

I would strongly advise anybody considering installing Open VPN Access Server to use it. I would rate it as ten out of ten.

We use OpenVPN Access Server to connect from site to site from our data center to our customer site and to dial and access our VPN to our network.

I have been using OpenVPN Access Server for approximately one year.

OpenVPN Access Server is very stable.

I have found OpenVPN Access Server to be scalable.

We have approximately 10 users using this solution.

I have been using Palo Alto and the Fortinet VPN as a comparison to OpenVPN Access Server.

OpenVPN Access Server is complicated to deploy, but we have a script that helps us with it. If we are using a script, it takes us approximately 15 minutes to deploy and without a script, it will take much longer. The process could be easier.

We did the deployment of the OpenVPN Access Server in-house.

We are using the community version of the OpenVPN Access Server and it is free.

I would recommend OpenVPN Access Server to others.

I rate OpenVPN Access Server an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case was to give mobile knowledge workers a secure connection across the Internet to our LAN, whether by laptop, mobile tablet or smart phone.

It allowed people to remotely access files from their mobile devices. It was so easy for end-users to use that they were able to work more efficiently no matter where they were, whether at a client’s campus, home, traveling – wherever they had a device and internet access.

This open-source solution provided the easiest UX for our end-users and had the greatest interoperability with all the operating systems we used, including but not limited to: iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, and Linux.

The upgrade path from older versions was more difficult than we wanted to tackle, so we ran an older version of the software for longer than I wanted. Patching, updating, and migrating to newer versions was a problem for us. That said, we were on a rather old version that I inherited yet it worked rock solid.

No issues.

We more than doubled our staff at my previous company and our OpenVPN appliance handled it well.

Tech support wasn’t needed during my 5 years administrating OpenVPN.

OpenVPN was already implemented when I took over the IT department. I do know that there was also a Cisco VPN product in place, but it was finicky and many of our end-users had issues with the Cisco VPN. At the time, it also didn’t work on mobile devices and the required ports were blocked by certain ISPs (like some hotel internet connections, cellular providers, etc.)

In-house expertise.

At one point I had to purchase addition connection licenses. I was very pleased with the pricing and licensing; so much easier than navigating the confusing jungle of Microsoft and Cisco licensing and pricing. That alone made the product a delight to manage.

I didn’t purchase OpenVPN, but I have evaluated other products for other departments I managed at other companies. Cisco and Fortinet are the two I remember off hand.

We did not use this product on AWS. We hosted the server on our network.

My advice would be, if OpenVPN fits your environment and needs, it’s a great solution. Do it.