I was not able to find anything on here that quite suited what I am trying to do so hopefully someone may be able to give some opinions.
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Here's what I am working with.
I have two locations that are separate companies but work together and are few miles apart.
1. Both are on suddenlink internet with public Ip's
2. Both have Servers with Server 2008 R2 acting as domain, dhcp, file server.
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Map of net coming in goes.
Location 1(Brooklyn domain).. Modem>Server(acting as router & Issuing DHCP)>Clients.
Location 2(Jersey Domain).. Modem>Netgear Firewall (pre-setup as router before I got here only issuing an address to server)>Server (issuing DHCP)>Clients.
I'm going to use example Brooklyn and Jersey to represent domains.
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There are a couple users at Location 2 that need to access the Shared_Drive on Location 1's server. I already have VPN setup on Location 1 server for users to work at home so at the moment I thought that I would just have the users at Location 2 connect to the VPN and everything would be fine. Wrong. After so long it will lose access to the shared drive even though the VPN connection remains connected and says that it is functioning correctly. I can do two things when this happens, 1. disconnect the vpn and reconnect, or 2. ipconfig /flushdns-ipconfig /release-ipconfig /renew and then unmap the drive through cmd and remap it. Either of these methods may work for 5 minutes or may work for days at a time it's just random. I need to have this as simple and non problematic for very basic level users. I created a batch file for the method 2 commands that they can just click but they still need to enter user name and password for their Brooklyn account even though they work for Location 2 and log on to their local machines with a Jersey domain account. This is way over basic level users heads and really should not be happening anyways. I can't narrow down to what is causing it though. I have an RDP connection setup for the accounting person at Location 2 that points to the public IP the server is using at Location 1 and that works great with no issues at all it's just the VPN that is being a problem child.
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*sidenote* The users that work for Location 1 that use the VPN at home for instance are logging into their local machines, some with local user account and some with Brooklyn domain account and have no issues with disconnection or loss of access.
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*sidenote 2* The users that are at Location 2 that use VPN connection are ALL logged in their computer with their respective Jersey domain accounts.
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My goal is either, 1. Fix the problem that is occurring what ever it may be-possibly something simple I am missing, or 2. Setup an alternative method for those Users at Location 2 to access the files at Location 1.
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I was told maybe setting up a site to site vpn between the servers themselves might be a good route, can you give any input on that? If that would entail setting up the servers to authenticate the domain users on either end to be able to access the files on the opposite end that would be excellent. Either end has maybe 100-250Gb of Data so I don't really want to have File replication setup because they only use certain parts but want to be able to browse everything. I could go that way though if it would be easier or more functional.
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Any assistance or ideas are appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Josh