Sunday, February 28, 2021

Spacedesk - Extend your Windows PC display using Android or iOS Device

If you are using a Windows PC and want to extend the desktop work area without buying additional hardware with help of your existing Android or iOS devices like mobile and tablets then Spacedesk is the tool for you.

 

Spacedesk is a free software that lets you extend your Windows PC display wirelessly onto your Android or iOS devices.

 

It has two software components. Spacedesk driver or server that installs on your main Windows PC to which you want to extend your display. A client software that you will install from either Google Play store or iOS App store on your respective device.

 

Only requirement for this setup to work is that all these devices are to be on same WiFi network. 

 

Just make sure the Spacedesk software is running on PC and fire up the app on the respective devices. The app would autodetect the server on Windows PC and would have an option to connect. Just click on the connect and voila now you have extended your PC display to your device.

 

 


 

Good thing is that this works with multiple devices at once. 

 

Below is my setup on which I have tested and it works just fine.

 




You can reorder your screens in the Windows Display settings so that you can move your mouse to respective screen. 

 


You can also use the touch on your devices if you do not want to you use the mouse. You have options to disable or enable touch.

 

It is very easy to setup and all this setup can be done within 5 minutes.The software is still in Beta but works without any hiccups.

 

For additional settings or help you can visit their documentation which is very good.

 

Download Spacedesk from here - https://spacedesk.net/##box_434

 

Read their documentation here - https://spacedesk.net/user-manual/



Sunday, August 16, 2020

Connect AWS VPC and Azure VNET using native Site to Site VPN without 3rd party Network Appliances

If you are the one who manages multi-cloud environment primarily having workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, you might know that it was not possible to use the native Site-to-Site (IPSEC) VPN options to connect AWS VPC with Azure Vnet unless there was a 3rd party network appliance on either AWS or Azure network.

 

AWS in 2019 has enabled support for IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange) for Site-to-Site VPN connections which enabled the option to securely connect AWS VPC and Azure Vnet directly with native gateway services and connection options.

 

If pre-requisites are in place, the whole process involves 3 steps and takes less than an hour to successfully build a highly reliable and performant Site-to-Site (IPSEC) VPN.


For the sake of simplicity and ease of setup, I am using the AWS default VPC (172.31.0.0/16) in N. Virginia (US-East-1) and Vnet in Azure (10.0.0.0/16) in Southeast Asia (Asia Pacific) region. I have also  setup GatewaySubnet (10.0.0.0/24) to setup the Virtual Network Gateway in Azure.


Lets quickly jump into the pre-requisites and then we will go through the steps

 

Azure 
1. A Virtual network (Vnet) in Azure
2. A GatewaySubnet in Azure Vnet
3. A Virtual Network Gateway in Azure (route-based VPN type)

AWS
1. A VPC in AWS 
2. A Virtual Private Gateway in AWS
 
  
Below is the sequence of steps to follow to setup the connectivity between AWS and Azure
 

Step-1 (Azure) 

1. Create Virtual Network Gateway, Can take 45 to 60 mins to create

2. Get the Public IP Address of the Virtual Network Gateway

 

Step-2 (AWS) 

1. Create Customer Gateway

2. Create VPN Connection using the Public IP Address from Azure in Step-1 

3. Download VPN connection configuration file

4. Get the Public IP Address of the AWS VPN from the file 

5. Make note of Pre-Shared Key from the downloaded configuration file

 

Step-3 (Azure) 

1. Create Local Network Gateway with IP address from AWS configuration file from Step-2

2. Add Connection to the Virtual Network Gateway

Wait for few minutes and the connection status would be UP and Connected and Resources can talk to each other over the Secure tunnel

Below are the screen shots from my setup for quick reference.

 

Create Virtual Network Gateway in Azure (Step-1)

Create Customer Gateway in AWS (Step-2)
 
 
 
 Create VPN Connection in AWS (Step-2)

 
Create Local  Network Gateway in Azure (Step-3)

Add Connection in Azure (Step-3)


Connection Status in Azure


VPN Connection Status in AWS