The Men & Mice Suite
Efficient and secure IP address management
The Men & Mice Suite is a management software solution built to meet the challenges of DNS, DHCP and IP address management in large computer networks.
The Men & Mice approach to the problems of IP address management is not to throw away an organization’s investment in existing infrastructure or to make radical changes to the organization’s network unless it is needed. Rather, the Men & Mice Suite complements the existing server investment by providing a non-intrusive and sophisticated management layer on top of them.
The Men & Mice Suite Overview
Men & Mice Suite value, features, and benefits
Unified global overview of the IP infrastructure allows administrators to manage hundreds of servers, thousands of DNS zones and DHCP scopes, and millions of IP addresses in a secure manner.
Men & Mice Suite value:
- Eliminating duplicate efforts in IP administration
- Decreased network downtime
- Reduced lead time in network changes and reduced support significantly increases administration efficiency
- Regulatory compliance is secured through logging of all activities in real time.
Optimized for large corporate networks, the Men & Mice Suite provides unique value in managing multiple DNS and DHCP servers.
The Men & Mice Suite works for heterogeneous environments and supports Microsoft and Unix environments or a mixture thereof as well as Cisco Router DHCP servers. The Men & Mice Suite provides administrators with tools for daily management, automating common processes, planning, reporting and auditing.
Men & Mice Suite Benefits:
- Better manageability of IP infrastructure through a unified global overview
- Improved security
- Decrease in network down time and reduced time spent in problem solving
- Increased efficiency through elimination of duplicate efforts in IP administration
- Reduced lead time in network changes
- Reduced helpdesk support
- Regulatory compliance through logging of all activities in real time
- Non-intrusive, low risk and low cost deployment
Men & Mice Suite Features:
- Non-intrusive, easy deployment
- Global IP address, DNS and DHCP configuration overview.
- Intuitive user interface, highly adaptable through custom fields
- Role-based users access control
- Mass updates across servers
- Automation of routine tasks
- Powerful reporting capabilities
- Advanced scheduling to run scripts and backups
- Complete audit trail showing all changes and user activity
- Input validation and error checking
- Full support of Active Directory integrated zones
- Integration with Microsoft AD Sites and Services
- Tracking of DHCP lease history
- Easy to use DHCP split-scope configuration tools and scope migration wizard for Microsoft environment
- Support for Dynamic DNS (DDNS)
- Advanced search and update functionality through Quick filters
- IP discovery
- Support for IPv6 on network level
- Support for DNSSEC zones and integration with Secure64 DNSSEC signer
- Microsoft single sign-on
- Ping before assignment
- Support for Cisco DHCP servers using SSH
- Failover support for ISC DHCP servers
- Full Integration between DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management
- Customizable web browser interface designed for departmental operators
- Integration options for external systems through SOAP interface
- Highly scalable solution ready to run in virtual environment
- Works fully in hybrid server infrastructures (mixed MS and Unix environments)
Men & Mice Suite Management Modules
The modules build on the Men & Mice Suite framework, and are designed to work with the existing servers and technologies, providing administrators with unified, secure and sophisticated interfaces to multiple servers.
- DNS Management Module
- DHCP Management Module
- IP Address Management Module
- DNS Expert and DNS Expert AD Monitor
Each module can be licensed independently of the others, but the real value of the Men & Mice Suite is realized as a powerful, integrated solution for DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management. Working together, the modules provide a unique management solution that enables organizations to keep track of their IP address space, individual hosts on the network, and their associations in DNS and DHCP.
Release of the Men & Mice Suite version 6.2
Version 6.2 of the Men & Mice Suite contains various new features and usability enhancements, making the system more powerful and easier to use.
This new release continues to show commitment in providing high quality enterprise IP address management solutions for organizations running Microsoft and/or Unix/Linux based networks, or a mixture thereof.
Usability, new web UI and enterprise readiness
The focus of the new version is on usability, new web UI and improved enterprise readiness.
The new release contains a new web interface. Usability in the web UI has been improved significantly and various new features are available from within the new web UI. Enterprise readiness has been further improved. Through automatic updates it is possible to configure the system so that the server controllers and the Management Console are automatically updated when a new version of Men & Mice Central is installed.
New features in version 6.2:
Click on the features to learn more;
Automatic updates
Web Interface
The web interface has been rewritten from ground up. Usability has been improved significantly and various new features are available from within the Web UI.
Zone transfers on Windows servers
Zone transfer settings can be automatically configured on Windows DNS servers when creating dynamic zones or changing zones from static to dynamic, elimininating the need of manually configuring those settings.
Improved DHCP error checking.
Consistency checking of split scopes on MS DHCP servers has been enhanced by implementing a number of new DHCP consistency checks.
Purging of DNS server cache.
The cache of DNS servers can be purged from within the Men & Mice Suite.
Cleanup of concurrent leases.
Version 6.2 of the Men & Mice Suite can find and release multiple concurrent DHCP leases for the same MAC address.
Cleanup of Orphaned PTR records.
Orphaned PTR records (PTR records without matching address (A) records) can be hard to track down and these records can clutter the DNS environment. Version 6.2 of the Men & Mice Suite can find and remove orphaned PTR records.
Scope Monitoring.
A common problem on networks using DHCP is the exhaustion of free addresses in DHCP address pools. The Scope Monitoring feature checks the number of free addresses in DHCP address pools and alerts the user when the addresses are running out.
MS SQL Server support.
Large enterprises require a powerful database to handle the large amounts of data that need to be stored. The Men & Mice Suite now supports the MS SQL Server as a database engine for the system.
The SOAP interface.
The Men & Mice Suite SOAP interface enables access to and from external applications or scripts using industry standard protocols. The SOAP interface is being used by the new web UI. The SOAP interface has been further improved and documented with sample code. Combined, these tools can be used to customize the solution by creating customer specific web tasks.