IP Management / Database

[baronne]

hi folks,
I wondered if any of you could recommend an IP address management tool. I have been using IPplan for a little while but I find it a little buggy and "unfinished". Any suggestions most welcome.
cheers
Baronne

[powdarrmonkey]

Excel.

[K.C.Leblanc]

Excel.

Same here, and I bet I've got more static IPs then you do.

[Michael]

What's wrong with DHCP Server?

[Heebeejeebee]

What are you trying to do that Excel or the DHCP snap in can't?

HBJB

[baronne]

Excel.

when you manage over 7000 IPs and about 400 subnets excel is a little bit on the sh1t side. I'm looking for something to auto-discover changes in DNS. Also we're looking for auditing - historical changes to IP addresses.

[baronne]

What's wrong with DHCP Server?

DHCP server is not an IP address management system.

[baronne]

Excel.

btw. I don't work in a school. I used to, and occasionally found this forum useful for finding free/inexpensive tools to manage the network.

[Domino]

Do you have a sharepoint site?

Currently use a seperate site on there to record network info such as IP's

[Michael]

DHCP server is not an IP address management system.

We'll just have to disagree then. In my opinion you set a scope or pool of IPs, view current leases, specify reservations and other scope options, such as DNS servers. This is a definition of management to me.

You have an unusual situation as managing 7000 active IPs and 400 subnets is a lot of work in itself and I can appreciate why you'd require additional tools. Microsoft have the Microsoft Windows Server DHCP 2000/2003/2008 Management Pack but I've never actually used this.

[GrumbleDook]

We'll just have to disagree then. In my opinion you set a scope or pool of IPs, view current leases, specify reservations and other scope options, such as DNS servers. This is a definition of management to me.

You have an unusual situation as managing 7000 active IPs and 400 subnets is a lot of work in itself and I can appreciate why you'd require additional tools. Microsoft have the Microsoft Windows Server DHCP 2000/2003/2008 Management Pack but I've never actually used this.

The DHCP service manages the set up and operation of the service but not always in the most friendly way to allow for audit trails. An example I could give for this would be if the police came knocking on your door for your logs to track down which computer had been used to groom some kids and they only have the IP to go on could you reliably find it? Could you then find who was logged onto that specific machine at that time? This sort of IP Management would definitely help with this, but I tend to recommend using excel to record the setup and to make use of IP Reservations where possible.

There are WMI to scavenge the details from the AD and this can be done to input into excel and WinITPro (formerly winscriptingsolutions) did have some examples of this about 3 years ago ...

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[baronne]

We'll just have to disagree then. In my opinion you set a scope or pool of IPs, view current leases, specify reservations and other scope options, such as DNS servers. This is a definition of management to me.

You have an unusual situation as managing 7000 active IPs and 400 subnets is a lot of work in itself and I can appreciate why you'd require additional tools. Microsoft have the Microsoft Windows Server DHCP 2000/2003/2008 Management Pack but I've never actually used this.

Hi michael,
it's not just windows servers we're managing which makes it all the more difficult to manage. We're talking 20-30 firewalls, oodles of switches, routers and other encryptors, unix servers, etc. etc.
It's features like NAT'ing - being able to record "links" between NAT addresses and real addresses, MAC addresses, location, notes, etc.

As I say IPplan is reasonably good, but just doesn't cut the mustard. I have read about various commercial products such as Bluecoat??? But haven't investigated them yet.

cheers for all your inputs.
baronne

[baronne]

Do you have a sharepoint site?

Currently use a separate site on there to record network info such as IP's

hey domino, yeah we do - I did put the idea forward at first as we use it to track allsorts of other things like licensing, etc. But we need some level of automation in there like SNMP etc.

cheers
baronne

[srochford]

I can recommend HDB but I'm afraid it's a private system :-)

More seriously, as Tony says, you need to think about what you're doing and why. If you've only got a limited number of IPs then a simple database or spreadsheet and a script to generate the reservations in Windows DHCP is doable; if you've got a huge number then you might need to look at something bespoke.

[Michael]

I would say realistically as you're managing multiple servers on different platforms, the monitoring and logging would have to be done at switch level. I presume your switches are managed, possibly Cisco or similar?