Hey guys. First of all, please don't mind my ignorance, I know very little about networking. I am doing a research for a philanthropic organization that I am helping, and they have this demand to connect their computers to a filesystem server (those computers are not in a LAN, but in a WAN).

A little background, this organization helps people with mental disorders, people who cannot take care of themselves, and so this organization have homes with caretakers and medical staff, and they take care of those people. I come from a web-developer background, so I can get my way around tech, but I confess that I know very little about networking (yes, shame on me, sry about that).

So, we have this demand to connect computers using windows 10, the goal is to have a main computer, acting as a server, hosting the files. I believe this is done using a server to be the filesystem host server.

Searching for how to solve this problem, I saw that I would need to have a server with a router and make use of a l2tp VPN. This is correct? About the server, I could use a Linux Server (something like a Ubuntu, for instance), or I would need to go with something like a Windows Server (or even a normal windows 10 distribution)?

About the router, I searched a little bit and I got saw that those Mikrotik routers would do the job. About the VPN protocol, I searched a little bit more and I saw that the protocol OpenVPN would be better than the l2tp. Till now, I did nothing, all I have is those clues and directions. I still have some doubts, like: can a Linux Server be the host for Windows computers (using windows 10) to connect and put and retrieve files there? It is possible to connect those windows machine at the OS level, using this "stack" I mentioned? If I am going in the wrong direction to accomplish our demand, can someone point me in a correct direction?

Good Morning,

1- Proof of Concept
I don't want to be a party crasher...
Just be aware the Windows10-Client will be connecting to the Fileserver via the Internet.
Slow Speeds and Network-Interuption are very common.

Depending on the Data and/or Software using the Fileserver,
you might get corrupted-Data or performace issues.

I know lot of Healthcare-Solutions that only support RDP / Citrix for WAN.
So be carefull =)

2- VPN
SSTP, OpenVPN, IPSec are very good with Microsoft Windows.
You may want to take a look at "Wireguard VPN"

It is quite Secure and very simple to Setup.
Mikrotik Wiki: https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/WireGuard

3- Fileserver OS
You don't need a Windows Fileserver for Windows Clients.
99% of every NAS on the Market is Linux-based

So use what ever you are confortable with !

This is classic example of what most of small business needed during the corona virus lockdown.

There are few tips I can give you:

• Go with the easiest way (if possible) - simply setup any popular cloud storage service (Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, Mega etc).
• If above not possible, check if NextCloud suits you (pretty much the same thing, except you host it). You might avoid all this VPN stuff as well, unless you want to go safer & harder way and setup VPN for each device.
• Another easy option would be Synology NAS with it's integrated files sharing functionality. Check this out, but obviously you would need to buy a NAS, something like at least 2 HDDs for RAID1, at least 4 HDDs for RAID5 or even more HDDs for RAID6 to maximize protection. See https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/file_sharing.
• If you decide to go with VPN, there are few options - L2TP, OpenVPN, IPSEC/IKE2, Wireguard. I am the fan of wireguard because how easy to set everything up. If you want to go the more "industry" way, you might be looking into setting up something like IPSEC/IKE2/OpenVPN on your router/server and let users login using their AD/freeradius authorization, but since accordinging tto what you wrote, you seem to be pretty bad at sysadmin/devops things, so I suggest avoiding it because without an experience you could simply make it worse rather than better for everyone.
• Myself I am Linux sysadmin/devops, so I personally recommend to go with Linux. In the long term you will appreciate the flexibility it offers. Also to make software installation easier - go with docker (docker-compose) type of software deployment.

As you can see, there is pretty much nothing related to Mikrotik RouterOS - only an option to setup VPN and port forward. Everything else is server things...

If it was me and assuming that I controlled the location of the main server.
a. ensure the internet connection at the main server location was robust 1 gig fibre
b. ensure the router at the main server was robust RB5009 or better
c. at each site location dependent upon internet connection 500gig or less use a hexS, if more RB/5009 or better (CCR)
d. Make use of SSTP protocol
e. Use free version (single user) of winboxremote for all the sites.
d. USe paid version (multiple clients) of winbox remote for main server/router and to get support and real time monitoring of connections.
e. it takes about 5 minutes to setup each device, literally (the first time will be the longest time and then it will be clear).
Then you can also use SSTP from your cell phone to connect to your router for config purposes and then you can manage the config remotely for ALL routers!

There may be more finesse gucci way of using amazon or google or whatever windows server farms where you pay monthly for virtual servers and use other means to provide the connectivity but I dont know much about them. Assuming streamers use this all the time for IPTV.

Finally, MT routers come with user manager, radius server etc......
So there may be a way to authenticate users to the SERVER behind your router using a hotspot type connection and thus no VPN needed??
Others can chime in on the accuracy and security aspect of this type of approach!