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The idea of virtual servers (or virtual hosts) was first introduced in web servers such as Apache. FreeRADIUS is the first RADIUS server to implement this functionality.

This functionality is different from running a RADIUS server inside of a virtual machine such as Xen or VMware. It does not offer the same protection as a virtual machine, but it is often much easier to configure and maintain.

Background

RADIUS servers have traditionally had one configuration, and one global policy that was applied to all incoming requests. That global policy was usually configured to select one or more sub-policies (e.g. per-client or per-user). The process of creating and maintaining those policies has often been difficult.

The largest problem in creating and maintaining these policies was in ensuring that changes to one sub-policy did not affect another independent sub-policy. As the number of users, devices, and policies increases, the effort required to debug these policies becomes significant. Virtual servers simplify this process considerably.

In FreeRADIUS 2.0, virtual servers can be configured independently for each of server IP address, client IP address, home server pool, and inner TLS tunnel.

IP based

The server can listen on multiple IP addresses, and each IP address can have it's own independent policy for incoming packets. For example, the following configuration enables the server to listen on two IP addresses, and to apply independent policies to packets received on each IP address.

listen {
    ipaddr = 192.0.2.1
    port = 1812
    type = auth
    virtual_server = one
}

listen {
    ipaddr = 192.0.2.2
    port = 1812
    type = auth
    virtual_server = two
}

server one {
    ...
}

server two {
    ...
}

When packets are received on the IP address 192.0.2.1, they will be processed through the server one virtual server. When packets are received on the IP address 192.0.2.2, they will be processed through the server two virtual server.

The contents of the server one and server two sections are authorize, authenticate, etc. sections used to process packets in version 1.x.

Client based

The server identifies RADIUS clients by IP address, and each client can have it's own independent policy based on client source IP address. For example, the following configuration enables the server to have two clients, and to apply independent policies to packets received from each IP address.

listen {
    ipaddr = 192.0.2.3
    port = 1812
    type = auth
    # no server section is defined here
    clients = disambiguate
}

clients disambiguate {
    client one {
        ipaddr = 192.0.2.4
        secret = testing123
        virtual_server = one
    }
    client two {
        ipaddr = 192.0.2.5
        secret = testing567
        virtual_server = two
    }
}
...
# server one as above
# server two as above

When packets are received on the IP address 192.0.2.3, they will be processed through the server one virtual server if they are received from client one. When packets are received on the same IP address (192.0.2.3), they will be processed through the server two virtual server if they are received from client two.

Both IP based and client based servers can be used at the same time, so long as there is only one way to map an incoming request to a virtual server. If the same request can map to multiple virtual servers, FreeRADIUS will return an error, and will refuse to start.

Home Server Pool based

The server identifies RADIUS home servers by server pools for fail-over and redundancy. Each home server pool can have it's own independent policy based on where the packet is being proxied. For example, the following configuration enables the server to have two home server pools, and to apply independent policies to packets that are proxied to home servers in each pool.

    ...
    home_server_pool one {
        type = fail-over
        home_server = 192.0.2.10
        home_server = 192.0.2.11
        home_server = 192.0.2.12
        virtual_server = proxy-pool-one
    }
    home_server_pool two {
        type = fail-over
        home_server = 192.0.2.13
        home_server = 192.0.2.14
        home_server = 192.0.2.15
        virtual_server = proxy-pool-two
    }
    ...
}
...
server proxy-pool-one {
    pre-proxy {
        ...
    }
    post-proxy {
        ...
    }
}
server proxy-pool-two {
    pre-proxy {
        ...
    }
    post-proxy {
        ...
    }
}

When requests are sent to one of the home servers listed in the pool, they will be processed through the server proxy-pool-one, or the server proxy-pool-two virtual server.

TLS Tunnels

The EAP tunneled methods present an authentication request to FreeRADIUS inside of the TLS tunnel. The eap module can map these tunneled requests to a virtual server. This mapping enables completely independent policies for each of the outer and inner tunneled sessions. This configuration was not possible in earlier versions of FreeRADIUS.

modules {
    ...
    eap {
        ttls {
            ...
            virtual_server = inner-tunnel
        }
        peap {
            ...
            virtual_server = inner-tunnel
        }
    }
    ...
}
...
server inner-tunnel {
    ...
}

When requests are received inside of a TTLS or PEAP tunnel, they will be processed through the server inner-tunnel virtual server.

More examples

For more examples, see the raddb/sites-enabled/ directory that is included in the server distribution.