In amongst the new functionality for Windows Server 2008 is the Remote Access Gateway (it acquired this name in Server 2008 R2 but was introduced as Terminal Server Gateway in 2008 R1) and Network Access Protection enhancements. The latter technology existed in previous editions of Server but was mainly concerned with enforcing protection against remotely connected clients whereas the current version can apply measures against computers in a local network. For the purposes of this post I am concerning myself with the use of NAP in the context of the use of the Remote Desktop services, and RD Gateway is used mainly in the specific context of a user logging in remotely to a network. Part of the enhancements are concerned with the specific tasks of verifying and enforcing system health checks. The SHA functionality consists of components that run in a client system and report back to the NAP server on the results of specific system health checks (for example the status of any antivirus software that is installed). The NAP server can then decide what kind of access it can grant or deny depending on the results of health checks and what constraints are applied such as enforcing logon hours for the connection.
Getting NAP working properly is a matter of setting up the server components, configuring the client computers’ NAP agents and testing. Windows Server provides consoles for the server component and it is a matter of following some fairly straightforward steps. Then comes the client testing. Without any client configuration I assumed it would work out of the box but it proved to be the case that the server was reporting my client as non-NAP capable. One of the first steps is to open the Windows Action Center and look at the NAP status being recorded under the Security category. This told me that the NAP agent service was not running so I went to Services and configured it to start automatically and started it. The next step was to find the NAP support forum on Technet from which a post gives me some instructions in how to carry out some diagnostic checks by opening a command prompt and running the command netsh nap client show state. This told me among other data that
Id = 79621
Name = RD Gateway Quarantine Enforcement Client
Description = Provides RD Gateway enforcement for NAP
Version = 1.0
Vendor name = Microsoft Corporation
Registration date =
Initialized = No
Further testing and checking has suggested the next step is to run the client configuration console on my computer, this is by running NAPCLCFG.MSC. Alternatively the same post gives information about how to run commands in a command prompt to achieve the outcome of changing that Initialized status to a Yes. Although this has occurred the next logon did not result in a remediation of this status and the client is still non-NAP capable according to the server. At this stage I have to leave my checking and go to other work so I will continue with this process over the weekend.