PIA "as a service" or device specific pfSense routing

eds89

Hi there,

I currently have the PIA desktop client running on a Windows Server 2016 VM, but have to maintain an interactive session in order for the desktop VPN client to run.
As all other services on this VM are actual services, I would like to try and eliminate the need for manual intervention/sign in when the VM restarts.

I would like to tackle this in one of two ways;
A. Have the desktop app or VPN connection run as a service level instance, starting with Windows automatically.
B. Setup the VPN connectivity on my pfSense box, but have selective routing so that only this device (or a group of devices) sends/receives traffic over the VPN.

It sounds to me like the latter might be the more feasible, but I hoping someone can advise on both options and their potential?
I have setup the PIA VPN on pfSense in the past, but have never found any way to do selective routing.

Many thanks
Eds

piaabo

To get you started with B, search 'policy based routing' with pfsense. by a quick google/youtube search i found one even for pia.

Regarding A, if you've set the pia client to autostart and it doesn't. It should be possible to run a script to start it for you via task scheduler. Option B looks better as it avoids drawbacks like the delayed pia start relative to other programs, or if pia crashes etc.

eds89

Ok thanks. Think I will start investigating option B a bit more, as you are right there look to be plenty of tutorials around setting up PBR with pfSense and OpenVPN.

Thanks.