Direct access must be configured to accept clients connections error in Essentials Dashboard health reports By Mariette Knap bpa, health report On a default Windows Server Essentials 2012R2 or 2016 you will see some errors and warnings that can be safely ignored but you can also remove them from occurring on your Server Manager dashboard or in the Essentials Dashboard health reports. One of those error is this one. In Server Manager click Dashboard and browse down to All Servers and click BPA results. There is one of the errors that shows up in the Health Reports. It is a bogus error because DirectAccess is not configured on a Windows Server Essentials but it is needed by the Essentials Experience role. Right click the error and choose Exclude Result. The error will be gone Right click and choose refresh There is another one that does not make any sense at all on a Windows Server Essentials machine that in most cases is the only server in the office. If you have two Domain Controllers you must configure the Preferred DNS server to have the IP address of the other DC in your network and the Alternate DNS server IP address should be set to 127.0.0.1 but as I said in most cases the Preferred DNS IP address is the only one set and the IP address should be the IP address of your server or 127.0.0.1. We right click and choose Exclude Result. If you run the BPA for all services that you run on your Windows Server Essentials you will find that more errors and warnings occur in AD Domain Services tile. Most of them complain about a situation you do not have which is more then one Domain Controller.