Previous versions of DirectAccess required a full Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) deployment.DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012 no longer has this requirement, and you can now accomplish deployment by using the Getting Started Wizard, which you’ll see later .
Prior versions of DirectAccess also required IPv6-capable operating systems and applications.However, DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012 now includes fully integrated NAT64 and DNS64 translation technologies, making it possible to use DirectAccess even with applications and operating systems that aren’t IPv6 capable.
You can now deploy DirectAccess behind a NAT device and have support for multiple domains,load balancing, and multiple sites. These changes with DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012 alter the design possibilities for DirectAccess significantly. For example, before Windows Server 2012, the DirectAccess server needed to have two network interfaces with two consecutive public IPv4 addresses. This is no longer the case; NAT support makes it possible to deploy the DirectAccess server inside the corporate network.
NOTE: NLB LIMITATIONS FOR DIRECTACCESS
The Network Load Balancing (NLB) capabilities of DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012 are limited to eight nodes, and the application doesn’t provide true cluster-aware capabilities.
In other words, if one server involved in the NLB goes offline, existing connections to that machine aren’t automatically transferred to other servers involved in the NLB configuration.
Table 3-4 lists the planning steps for DirectAccess deployment.
TABLE 3-4 Planning for DirectAccess deployment
