How to use Windows as an Evolve Virtual Appliance

Threat Intelligence • August 10, 2021

Evolve provides the ability to generate pre-configured Evolve Virtual Appliances for a variety of platforms, such as VMware, Hyper-V, AWS, Azure and Docker – as detailed within our  Getting Started with the Evolve Virtual Appliance blog post.
In addition to these platforms, a Windows host can always be utilised as an Evolve Virtual Appliance, as detailed in the steps below.
Step 1 : Download the VPN Gateway configuration from the Evolve Console. Navigate to Security Zones > Gateways and click the Download button for the relevant VPN Gateway:

A screenshot of a web page with a red arrow pointing to the a button.

Step 2 : Evolve will provide a ZIP file with the required configuration files, including your corresponding Evolve Certificate for trusted encryption and authentication.
Step 3 : Download an OpenVPN client from the following source:

Step 4 : Unzip VPN gateway configuration into the:
  • C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config

Step 5 : Rename evolve.conf to evolve.ovpn
Step 6 : Navigate to the Control Panel > Network and Sharing Centre > Change Adapter Settings. Enable Internet Connection sharing on your LAN interface, typically named Ethernet, selecting the OpenVPN TAP interface to share with:

A screenshot of a computer screen with a red arrow pointing to the right.

Step 7 : Change OpenVPN TAP interface back to DHCP addressing*:
  • Step 7.1: 

A screenshot of a computer screen showing how to connect to a network.

  • Step 7.2:

You can get ip settings assigned automatically if your network supports this capability.

*The sharing will set a static IP, which we don’t want.
Step 8 : Connect VPN, there will be an OpenVPN GUI as an option:

A computer screen shows a menu that says evolve user import file settings exit

Step 9 – Done!
You’ll see traffic going across VPN to host on the network:

A blurred image of a computer screen that says ping 10.0.1.222

And traceroute too:

A black screen with a lot of text on it

Now that we’ve shared how to use Windows as an Evolve Virtual Appliance, book a demo with our Cybersecurity Experts and see how Evolve can augment your security team with specialist security automation and orchestration capabilities.

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