Once you have installed the Open VPN client onto your PC, you can use it to connect to your Zynstra server via VPN.
Note: you must have local admin rights to install OpenVPN, but as of OpenVPN version 2.4.0 (released December 2016) local admin rights are no longer needed to run it and connect successfully. See here for more information.
Launch the OpenVPN-GUI program by double clicking on the desktop icon, or by going to Start > All programs > Open VPN.
Note: as noted above, it is necessary to launch OpenVPN with admin rights if using a client version of 2.3.x or older. If Step 8 of the OpenVPN installation instructions has been carried out, this will happen automatically. It is also possible to right-click the OpenVPN shortcut and choose "Run as Administrator".
In both cases, a User Account Control (UAC) prompt will typically pop up, asking "Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC?" to which it is necessary to answer "Yes".
The GUI icon will then be shown in the system tray, as shown in the image below. Note that this icon can be hidden when marked "inactive" by the OS, so check the expanding arrows to the left of the system tray if it's started but not shown.
Context Menu
Right-clicking on the icon will pull up the context menu. This menu will allow you to connect any of the VPN config files.
The screenshots below show the following context menu samples:
1) Context menu when no config files are present:
2) Context menu with a single config present:
3) Context menu with multiple configs present:
Connecting and Disconnecting
Once you have created a config file, going into the context menu and selecting the "Connect" entry will start openvpn on that config file. A status window will open up showing the log output while the connection attempt is in progress (see first screenshot below.) After successful connection, the status window will be hidden, but can be viewed from the context menu if desired.
Once connected, the context menu will allow that VPN to be disconnected; select that option to terminate the active connection.
Screenshot showing an active connection attempt:
Screenshot showing the context menu for an actively-connected VPN:
When one or more VPN instances are running from the GUI, the tray icon will change color to indicate this:
