Is it hard to create my own personal VPN server and set it up on Windows 10?

It’s actually really easy to setup your own cheap VPN server at ServerMania and connect to it on your Windows 10 machine. It takes only a few minutes to setup a VPN. We’ll show you how to setup a Windows 10 VPN in this article.

VPN Server System Requirements

The system requirements for setting up a VPN server with OpenVPN are fairly modest:

  • A ServerMania Hybrid​ or Dedicated Server
  • CentOS 7 (although other distributions are supported)
  • 128MB of RAM –  we recommend 1GB of RAM for other system services
  •  10GB of disk space for OpenVPN and other system packages
  • A Windows 10 machine to connect to the VPN with

Instructions for Installing a Personal VPN Server on Windows 10

Setup the VPN Server

To begin, you’ll need to order a ServerMania Hybrid, Cloud, or Dedicated Server. This is the server that will host the VPN that your Windows 10 server will connect to.

Use coupon code SOCIAL10 to a receive lifetime 10% off discount.

When ordering the server, select CentOS as the operating system. We’ll email you the server login details once the server is ready.

Connect to the Server

On your Windows 10 machine, you can download PuTTY which you will use to SSH to your ServerMania server.

Login as root to the IP address we sent to you in the welcome email.

Install OpenVPN

Once you are connected, we’ll begin by installing wget, used to download the installation script:

yum install wget

Next, we’ll download a popular OpenVPN installation script from github:

wget https://git.io/vpn -O openvpn-install.sh

Let’s update the permissions on the file to make it executable:

chmod 755 openvpn-install.sh

Now to begin the install process:

./openvpn-install.sh

Enter this information on the installation script:

  1. The primary IP of the server is automatically filled. Hit enter to proceed.
  2. Hit 1 to proceed with UDP installation.
  3. Hit enter to proceed on the default port.
  4. Enter the DNS provider you wish to use on the server. We recommend OpenDNS.
  5. Enter your name to be used when generating the client certificate and hit enter.
  6. Hit enter to proceed with the installation.

The script will install OpenVPN and generate all of the required keys for usage.

Starting, Stopping, and Restarting OpenVPN

After installation, OpenVPN will start automatically and will be set to start at boot. Here are the start and stop commands for your reference:

To start OpenVPN:

systemctl start openvpn@server.service

To stop OpenVPN:

systemctl stop openvpn@server.service

To restart OpenVPN:

systemctl restart openvpn@server.service

Connecting to your VPN server

Your  VPN configuration file is available at /root/client.ovpn which can be used to configure your local VPN client. You can copy the content of the files by viewing it and copying it into a local text file:

cat /root/client.ovpn

Once you have saved this text file, you can use this file in your Windows 10 VPN client to connect.

Connect to the VPN on Windows 10

You can now connect to the VPN on your Windows 10 computer. Click the link below to download the OpenVPN client for Windows 10.

Windows 10 VPN Client:

OpenVPN Connect

After you’ve downloaded OpenVPN, open up the install file.

Click the “Next” button.

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Click I Agree

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Click Next

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Click Install

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If you see the following message, click Install

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Click Next

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Click Finish

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Now you can copy the OpenVPN configuration file you created earlier into the OpenVPN directory.

You’ll find it on following path: C:Program FilesOpenVPNconfig

You’re all set!

You can now connect using your VPN client to your own VPN server on Windows 10. If you need any help, feel free to contact our support team.