Sensible IPAM Part 2: Scaling your IP Infrastructure

As we continue our series on creating a sensible strategy to consolidate management of your scattered network resources, let's dive deeper into adding resources to your network.

Each part of this blog series about IPAM (IP Address Management) presents real-world problems that we have years of experience in solving. This week’s focus is on IP infrastructure.

Scaling existing configurations

You may be:

• an MSP Infrastructure Server Admin, using Microsoft. Your business utilizes Virtual Machines to handle client workloads, but without an efficient handling of IP addresses, your DNS doesn't get updated fast enough. Customers complain about lags.
• a Product Manager for a SaaS company seeing an uptick in customer numbers. You have the system set up just right, but to handle all the demand, you are looking at pulling in dynamic resources using multi-cloud accounts. You also don’t want to add more team members to handle it, but automate instead.

• a Director of Operations overseeing a large network spanning several locations. At the start, you used to have spreadsheets to track IP addresses, and kept configuration files practically in your head. Surely there must be a better way.

It makes no sense to start from scratch unless you have no other option. Any business that's been around for a while will have their workflows and configurations set up for the most part. And with the array of affordable cloud resources in services like AWS and Azure, moving on-prem configurations to cloud infrastructure becomes a viable option.

From smaller networks to large, from on-prem to cloud, from manual spreadsheets to automation: it’s just a matter of scaling.

What You Need

A DNS, DHCP, and IPAM (DDI) solution to pull data unobtrusively from your existing configurations. You may have been using spreadsheets for tracking IP addresses, and a local library with DNS configuration files. Whatever they may be, you need to plug them into the new solution.

In addition, it needs to replicate and automate provisioning for new resources. Bonus points for a holistic approach, where various vendors can be brought in without the accompanying overhead, special training or new personnel. In short, you want to use an API-driven solution to control and manage all others.

Where Men&Mice can help

A software-based, API-driven, and back-end agnostic solution, Micetro by Men&Mice was developed to simplify core management of IP infrastructure in heterogeneous environments.

Micetro is a single-pane-of-glass overlay for your entire IP infrastructure, current, and future. Adding new resources, regardless of platform or vendor, isn’t hindered with compatibility problems since the software takes care of communicating with various on-prem solutions and cloud services through powerful, reliable APIs.

Overseeing multiple locations and resource allocations for different teams or projects can be done elegantly and easily. Already tested configurations can be deployed swiftly in new environments, extending oversight and reducing time for onboarding.

Once in place, configurations can be scaled and replicated easily and automatically. Copy or extend DNS zones and DHCP scopes, and deploy user authentication (including MS Active Directory) for new locations.

Spawning new virtual machines on cloud infrastructures is supplemented by IP address assignments that are reflected in all DNS servers. Once those IPs are released, the changes are automatically propagated through the network at once.

You and your team can reduce project time and cost significantly through more quickly responding to the changing needs of your business, without the need to set up lengthy processes each time.

Multi-cloud environments can be plugged into Micetro. Automated through a single API layer, and secured with role-based access control the network can scale out to any size and into any platform to accommodate workload, and scaled back once resources become unnecessary.

Plus, with Men&Mice, you can manage and migrate workloads to, from and between your on-prem and whichever best-in-class cloud service make sense for you.

Reach Out

We'd love to hear your suggestions for what kind of IPAM related content you would like to see from us. Alternatively, if you're looking to get started with your IP address Management (IPAM), you can sign up for your free trial! The beauty of an overlay is that you can install it completely risk-free.