(basic) Questions about OpenVPN

What I'm looking to do is have one desktop computer act as a server, and have one, or maybe a few mobile workstations be able to access the data on one of the storage drives. Now, I'm pretty sure this is possible and the OpenVPN would serve my needs, but some of the details on the OpenVPN Project site are a little wordy for my tastes, and I'd just like a little advice before I dive into this.

The desktop, or "server" if you will is running windows XP Pro SP2, the other computers looking to access it should be running XP or linux, but that shouldn't be an issue from what I understand. The server computer has a primary HDD, and a 250gb storage drive. I want to be able to share all the data on the drive but only to authorized users. (address and password login i suspect cover this, yes?)

from what I understand at this point is, after the mobile user has logged in, the storage drive will show up as a physical hard drive on their computer, where they can view, add, remove, and modify files. All of this happens in real time on the server drive though, is this right? If in order to do any modification they have to copy the files to the local hard drive and then send them back to the server over the VPN it isn't quite what I'm looking for.

Like, for example, if I have a folder on the server named Z:music_files/music and it contained a music library, could a mobile user say, point iTunes to look in Z:music_files/music and have it load the library and play it on the laptop directly from the server? Would there be any horrible concequences by doing this, if it's really laggy or something? Or does this not work at all, and I'd have to copy Z:music_files/music to C:music_files/music?

Thanks for any help I can get. If something in the above dosen't work, and there is a different free software solution for it, point me in it's direction, thanks.

 

Will try to answer your questions. All VPN tunnels make the remote server act as a local drive. BE aware that VPN tunnel speed is based on your uplink speed. If you have less than 1mbps uplink speed it will be slow. The more you add the slower it will get.

Using it to stream music will work but you may not have the band width.

Hamachi may also work for you.

 

thanks for the reply. I think I just have one other question then. Is that alone secure enough? Or would it be wise to use security software like TrueCrypt in addition?

 

It should be secure enough, 3DES is 168bit encryption. Long as you protect your security keys, and always use the max chrs allowed, that are randomly generated.

More secure than a std wireless connection.