Men and Mice

Clear and integrated view of the network infrastructure

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Standard server technologies for handling DNS and DHCP are great for their purposes, i.e. for handling core DNS and DHCP services. On the other hand, the standard servers were not desinged to address the management challenges that arise when tens or even hundreds of DNS and DHCP servers are serving the same network infrastructure. In such scenarios network administrators are hard pressed to have an up-to-date and consistent view of the network, particularly of the current IP address assignments, and data registered in DNS and DHCP. The Men & Mice Suite is designed to remedy this situation. It provides an integrated IP Address Management database and effectively provides a unified, updateable view of the information stored on the DNS and DHCP servers.

Architecturally, the Men & Mice Suite is inspired by the three-tier design approach. A typical three-tier system consists of a user interface layer, a middle layer containing functional logic or business rules, and a data storage and access layer. Deploying the Men & Mice Suite allows the network administrator to think of DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management as a three-tier system.

The database layer

The database consists of a unified view of data existing on individual servers in the organization, namely:

• DNS zones and records from all DNS server connected to the system.
• DHCP scopes and leases from all DHCP server connected to the system.
• Permanent data storage in the Men & Mice Suite where IP address ranges, individual host meta-data, user access control information and other management-related information is stored.

Note that the Men & Mice Suite never stores a master copy of the DNS or DHCP data and always treats the actual DNS and DHCP servers as the authoritative sources of information. The Men & Mice Suite works with and complements the existing servers instead of replacing them.

The middle layer

The middle layer functionality is carried out by the Men & Mice Suite Central server. All management and configuration traffic goes through this layer. The Central server is responsible for authenticating users, relaying traffic, and enforcing the access rules defined by the network administrators. Central communicates with the DNS and DHCP servers on the network, and generally moves data between the two surrounding layers.

The user-interface layer

The Men & Mice Suite offers two main user-interfaces to the network infrastructure:

• The Men & Mice Management Console. This is a sophisticated easy-to-use Windows application, primarily designed for senior network administrators. The Management Console provides a clear integrated overview of the whole DNS, DHCP and IP address space. Management tasks include zone management, user management, access control, automation configuration, mass-updates and server management.
• Easy task delegation for further details.

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