Microsoft UAG DirectAccess Clients Cannot Reach and Ping your Partner/Newly Acquired Company Network

Its quite often that many corporations acquire a new company or merge with another company with different domain name, subnets................etc. DirectAccess clients in one company cannot reach or ping the different resources, servers, routers..........etc in the other side (acquired/partner company). This can be solved by modifying your DNS infrastructure and UAG DirectAccess Settings as per the following steps:

1. Configure the UAG server to have an IPV4 route to the new acquired network(s). 
2. Make sure that the new acquired Network(s) are added to the UAG internal Networks. This can be done from the UAG Admin Menu – Network Interfaces – Define Internal network IP address range.
3. The DNS servers used by the UAG and DirectAccess clients should be configured to resolve the acquired/Partner Domain either by having their DNS zone or by using conditional Forwarders.
4. Configure your DirectAccess clients to use a DNS suffix search list. This list should include their current original company domain and the newly acquired domain. You may want to test it manually to ensure its working however its preferred to be done on the UAG DirectAcccess clients OU using Group policy as per attached.

5. Microsoft UAG need to be configured to ensure that the client’s NRPT (Name Resolution Policy Table) instructs the client to contact UAG for name resolution of the acquired domain. This will be done from the DirectAccess UAG configuration Step 3 (Infrastructure Servers – DNS Suffixes) as shown below

6. Apply the new config/policy and Activate the UAG.
7. Finally run gpupdate /force on the client to refresh the client group policy. To ensure that the policy is updated on the DirectAccess client you can run the “netsh namespace show pol”.

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RemoteApp and Web Application ICON Customization in UAG 2010 Portal

UAG 2010 Portal customization is one of the key strengths in the UAG system. The Customization of UAG is based on the Custom Update concept, for more details and real life example, please check the following articles:

• http://itcalls.blogspot.com/2012/03/uag-portal-home-page-customization-left.html
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee861168.aspx

One of the main customization issues that i faced during the last few weeks is changing the Default icons for applications and RemoteApp published applications on the portal. UAG by default is pre-loaded with several default icons for different applications however Custom apps published using the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) RemoteApp or custom Web published apps gets the default ICON which is not sometimes representing the application as per the Owner point of view. In this article i will provide two examples for ICON customization in UAG 2010 Portal.

1. RDS RemoteApp applications, This includes three fairly simple steps:
• You need to have your ICON file saved in PNG format, the size won't matter as the UAG will automatically re-size it according to its placement in the portal. I tried 15x15 and 32x32 and 64x64 Pixels and it worked fine for the three of them.
• The ICON need to be saved under
  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway\von\PortalHomePage\images\AppIcons\CustomerUpdate (Provided that you installed the UAG in the default C-drive Location). The file should be saved under the application name, for example if your RemoteApp published application is named App1, then its icon should be App1.png.
• Activate the UAG
2. Custom Web Application, By default Custom Web application is published with the default App.gif file, to change this you have to do it in two locations:
• The main (Home) Portal area will need a GIF icon 90x50 Pixels and it will be saved same as the RemoteApp under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway\von\PortalHomePage\images\AppIcons\CustomerUpdate (Provided that you installed the UAG in the default C-drive Location). Again Make sure to name the GIF file with the same name as per your published Application (For example App1.GIF).
• Edit the Properties of the published Application on the UAG portal and change the ICON properties on the Portal Link TAB to reflect the new ICON

• The LeftExplorer Menu needs another ICON file with lower Pixel 15x15 and it should be named with the application name_ICON (For example App1_icon.GIF), similar to the above example, its saved under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway\von\PortalHomePage\images\AppIcons\CustomerUpdate (Provided that you installed the UAG in the default C-drive Location).
• Activate the UAG

These two examples should lay the basic knowledge to customize your UAG Portal application ICONS and hopefully you will find it useful.

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