Server Standard 50 IAS Connections Question

[bigdogchris]

I am debating between Server 2008 R2 Standard and Enterprise. My only remaining concern is the Standard edition's 250 RRAS and 50 IAS connections limitations. The reason that makes this decision hard is I don't completely understand what the difference between these two is.

RRAS is for remote access/VPN connections to the domain, right?

IAS is RADIUS clients, right?

Now does 250 RRAS connections mean 250 remote/vpn users?

Does 50 IAS connections mean 50 users or 50 access points pointing back to NPS RADIUS for authentication? (Is a client a user or access point)

Finally, are these restirctions per server or per domain?

 

[shabazkilla]

IAS was the term for the RADIUS authentication server in 2000/2003. In 2008/2008 r2 it is replaced with the NPS (Network Policy Server) server role. NPS also does health checking for Network Access Protection.

As for licensing differences - this is from a Microsoft whitepaper on NPS:

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Editions
With NPS in Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, you can configure an unlimited number of RADIUS clients and remote RADIUS server groups. In addition, you can configure RADIUS clients by specifying an IP address range.

Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
With NPS in Windows Server 2008 Standard, you can configure a maximum of 50 RADIUS clients and a maximum of 2 remote RADIUS server groups. You can define a RADIUS client by using a fully qualified domain name or an IP address, but you cannot define groups of RADIUS clients by specifying an IP address range. If the fully qualified domain name of a RADIUS client resolves to multiple IP addresses, the NPS server uses the first IP address returned in the Domain Name System (DNS) query.

A RADIUS client is a VPN concentrator, WAP, etc.

RRAS is for setting up vpn connections (end user or site-to-site). Here's an overview of the limitations of each edition:
2003 Std - 1000 VPN connections
2003 Ent - Unlimited
2008 Std - 250 connections
2008 Ent & Data Cetner - unlimited

Each VPN user and site-to-site tunnel would count towards the limit, although the limit is on active connections, so it should be concurrent connections, not total.

 

[bigdogchris]

But does 50 RADIUS clients mean, say, 50 AP/Switches or 50 users?

 

[shabazkilla]

50 AP/switches