Getting started with Microsoft 365/Exchange Online in 2021 is very easy and relatively cheap (I am paying 5 bucks a month for one mailbox and some extra stuff, like 1 TB of OneDrive storage).
Roughly speaking, here are the high level steps from beginning to end:
Create your subscription
Add a custom domain
Verify the domain
Add DNS entries for MX, Autodiscover, and SPF
Create users
License users
Wait some minutes to see the mailbox in Exchange Online
Add account in Outlook
After creating your tenant (easy to do, you can also work with a third party, instead of buying the subscription directly off of Microsoft), open https://admin.microsoft.com and select Azure AD. Unser Custom domain names, add the organization's domain.
You verify the domain by adding a TXT record to at the root of your domain. You could also verify by MX record, but usually the organization has some sort of functioning mail product, so in a migration scenario that is not an option.
@ means the root of your domain. In my case ajni.it
Due to DNS Time To Live (TTL) and caching, this might take some time.
Back to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, under Settings > Domains select the newly added domain and then Continue setup. Add the 3 records to your DNS.
Select Add your own DNS records. For mailing, Exchange Online and Exchange Online Protection records are needed.
After correctly adding DNS records for Exchange Online, add a user in Azure Active Directory and assign the license. Very straightforward. Set usage location to your organization's country. If you do not specify a usage location, licenses cannot be assigned to that user.
Under License the license can be assigned.
You could also choose to selectively assign certain products of the subscription. Either way one license will be burned.
It takes some minutes for the mailbox to show up in Exchange Online after assigning the license.
From now on, the account can be added in Outlook or accessed through Outlook on the Web https://outlook.office365.com
With this awesome script, you can read Active Directory group membership and convert that information into a CSV file, which can be imported in Microsoft Excel.
The file will be saved inside C:\Temp. The result looks something like this (I'm no Excel wizard):
Here are the ADCS Templates needed for the deployment:
VPN Server Authentication
Make sure you leave Authenticated Users. Add Autoenroll to Ras and IAS Servers.
In Application Policies, Add IP Security IKE Intermediate
Allow the private key to be exported.
VPN Authentication Offline (Make a duplicate of the template that you just created)
Subject Name - Supply in the request
VPN User Authentication
Add the group that will contain the VPN Users
Do not make the key exportable.
You might not need the Microsoft Software Key Storage Provider. If you test the client side on a VM though, the user will not be able to obtain the certificate, because the client computer needs a TPM chip. By selecting the Software Key Storage Provider a certificate is still obtainable.
Next, VPN Computer Authentication
Add the group containing the VPN Computers. Computers will use a device tunnel and have access to the Domain Controllers and PKI infrastructure.
Edit the existing template Domain Controller Authentication. Make sure that KDC Authentication and Smart Card Logon is added.
Auto enrollment should be active. Just double check.
Add the templates that were just created.
If there is no GPO for Certificate Auto Enrollment, create one at the top of the Domain on the User and Computer Level (Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Public Key Policies > Certificate Services Client - Auto Enrollment):
Now, let's configure the NPS server. Just install the feature through Server Manager (I skipped that part here).
Register the server in Active Directory.
Add a new Radius Client (which will be the RRAS Server outside of the Domain, in a DMZ network). Save the Shared secret externally. It will be added to the VPN server as well.
Open the properties of the server > Security. Set the Shared secret that was automatically generated on the Radius server. Insert the IP of the Radius server. Communication is done through Port 1812 UDP.
Select the imported certificate.
Under IPv4 specify the VPN clients network settings.
Disable the unused Ports.
Same thing for Wan Miniport L2TP, PPTP and PPOE
To allow the device tunnel, run these PowerShell commands. The device will not be authenticated by the NPS server, instead the RRAS server will validate if the certificate is valid and issued by the Certificate Authority that we trust.
Ports 4500 and 500 UDP must be reachable from the internet. The NAT rule should point to the VPN server.
To deploy the user and device tunnel check out the references at the end. Both scripts must be executed as SYSTEM user. I used Task Scheduler to execute the PowerShell scripts as SYSTEM.
If you need help, let me know. It is fairly straight forward, but you should take your time and thoroughly read the documents before testing.
It is not possible to delete or rename a folder that contains a blank space at the end with Windows Explorer. It can only be done by using this cmd command:
You can easily run one or multiple programs at logon without messing with the Registry by using Group Policy Object (GPOs).
Under User (or Computer) configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Logon > Run these programs at user logon you can insert the path of the executable. Very clean and straight forward.
