Finding the right technology

While Fisbeck had been doing research on DNS, DHCP and IP address management vendors for years, his searches hadn't turned up what he needed at Whirlpool.

"I had a very clear picture of what I needed an IP address management product to do," he says. "And in all honestly, it just wasn't out there yet."

Fisbeck's criteria included an easy-to-use interface, so even the non-Unix masters could operate the product without extensive training. He also wanted a product with failover and redundancy. Most importantly, Fisbeck says he wanted a product that allowed him to create role-based access controls for other departments. For instance, if the server group needed IP addresses, they could access the IP address system, allocate what they need and exit without causing errors.

"The biggest advantage would be to have the ability to delegate so other groups don't have to call me to see which IPs are available," he explains. "They can then manage their own groups but within the guidelines I have set, and in such a way that the chance for errors is reduced and Whirlpool's network is protected."

Fisbeck's research in 2006 led him to BlueCat Networks.

BlueCat bundles its software on appliances, dubbed Adonis and Proteus. BlueCat's Adonis appliances enable network managers to centrally manage multiple DHS and DHCP configurations. Proteus is an enterprise-scale IP address-management appliance that combines name services, dynamic IP assignment and IP inventory. Companies with multiple Adonis appliances can manage them through Adonis console software or integrate them into a larger Proteus IP address management system.

Today Fisbeck has two Adonis appliances installed on Whirlpool's network, and he plans to add another four as well as a Proteus system to oversee them all by the end of April.

"We intend to have all of the internal and external master DNS servers on Adonis and Proteus managing the entire environment by then," he says.

In the meantime, Fisbeck is working to migrate existing DNS, DHCP and IP address data over to BlueCat's devices. BlueCat provides tools to load BIND files into Adonis' Java-based GUI. In the process Adonis has been reporting on existing errors in the BIND files, which Fisbeck has been addressing to enable more efficient DNS going forward.

"One side benefit was that the appliance showed up errors in the BIND files and we were able to clean them up quickly," he says.

BlueCat's technology also provides a tool to use with systems such as Microsoft's Active Directory that creates BIND files based on the Active Directory data and imports them into Adonis in a consistent fashion. One challenge, Fisbeck reports, is extracting DNS and DHCP data from the network registrar, but BlueCat currently is working with him to ease that process.

"I expected a fair amount of difficulty in migrating all the data over, and it was surprisingly easier than I had anticipated," Fisbeck says.

BlueCat also recently updated its product suites with support for IPv6.

"IPv6 is still a couple years off for us, but it is comforting to know the vendor supports where our network will be in five years," he says.