Connect to Multiple OpenVPN Instances

Updated by Russ Malloy on Feb 13, 2014
Article Code: kb/995

Description

Some customers have large organizations with a Parent account and several sub-accounts with their own OpenVPN setups. With the new version of OpenVPN (Version 2.3.2), creating or listing multiple connections has changed. This article describes how to set up multiple connection end points for you to connect to.

Audience

  • All Windows Users of OpenVPN

Pre-Requisites

Detailed Steps

  1. Disconnect from all OpenVPN connections
  2. Navigate to your OpenVPN configuration direction (i.e. C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config).
  3. Create a folder for each end point connection you require. In this example we will use Connection_A and Connection_B
  4. Move or download the OpenVPN files to the newly created folder(s). The following files should exist in each folder: ca.crt, default.crt, default.key, default.ovpn, tlsauth.key.
  5. You must rename the default.ovpn file to a unique name across all sub folders. It is usually best to just use the parent folder name (i.e. Connection_A, Connection_B)
  • You can run the following commands in PowerShell to automatically rename the default.ovpn files to their parent folder names

    cd "C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config"
    dir | %{gci $_ -Filter *.ovpn | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name + ".ovpn"}}
    
  1. Now you can start OpenVPN (running as Administrator). Right-click the OpenVPN icon in the system tray (where the clock is), and you can select the connection you wish to make.

Additional Information

Please note that by default you may only connect to a single end point with OpenVPN because you only have a single TAP adapter. For each additional TAP adapter you create you'll be able to connect to multiple end points simultaneously.

To add additional TAP adapters, run the addtap.bat command file located at C:\Program Files\TAP-Windows\bin. Each time you run that script, a new TAP adapter will be created and you can simultaneously connect to another end point.