"I like the small physical size of DNSBOX, its flashed based disk architecture, and easy to use admin interface..."
Randy Haynes, Senior Network Engineer, EDS, USA
"ApplianSys responded within a day, and we shortly scheduled a meeting to discuss the need further"
Matthew Parris, GE Appliances, USA
"DNSBOX does what it says on the thing"
Festus Adegbite, Network Engineer, Westfield (URW), UK
"We no longer have to put up with the hefty bills and poor service levels of our ISP’s DNS management service"
Mike Bird, IT Director, DHL, UK
"With DNSBOX we now have a hardened and easily managed solution not to mention the savings in space, electricity and cooling"
John Calisi, IT Manager of Operations, Tennessee Board of Regents, USA

Simplify, Control and Protect Your DDI

A DDI management solution will make administration of your network’s names and numbers – planning IP address usage, running DNS and DHCP services – easier. Much easier. You will:

  • Radically simplify the work involved, saving time, saving money
  • Increase control over the data involved, the processing of that data by the people involved and the effective running of the services the data affects
  • Protect these core services from high-impact security threats and service failures

For many organisations, administering DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management (DDI) is challenging. When ApplianSys entered the DDI market with DNSBOX in 2002, the workload was already a) large and time-consuming and b) complex and difficult.

Since then, networks have grown many times over and the complexity has increased. The headache for network managers has got much worse…

Standard tools have poorly designed workflows making it unnecessarily difficult

  • There is a lot to learn and know about configuring DNS/DHCP services. Administrators must remember the correct format/data for entry, as well as be familiar with complex protocols.
  • Working with a command line increases the level of difficulty and learning required.
  • Editing of DDI data seems designed to make your life difficult and create extra work!
    • There are lots of repetitive steps and copying & pasting from one system to another.
    • There is much to get right, both at the level of syntax – typing the right characters – and network logic – entering the right values and remembering the right steps
    • With so much to remember, the chances of making a mistake are high.
  • There are multiple connected servers to manage – both maintaining each server and controlling the linkages between them. Standard tools don’t make this easy.

Risks are high and so is the business impact if something does go wrong

  • Mistakes have two potentially high costs:
    • Even a single character wrong can mean a DNS or DHCP service fails, which means the network fails and could mean a big business problem
    • Once there’s a problem, finding a mistake is often not easy and takes a lot of time
  • DDI services are top security targets. To protect against  attacks like DoS and cache poisoning is a complex task with many aspects to take care of.
  • A server failure can also lead to disaster. So reliability and redundancy are key headaches.

The difficulty of the work leads to people issues

  • Your more experienced staff are needed, keeping them from more value-added work.
  • Delegating even the easier tasks to junior staff is hard to do with standard tools.
  • You become dependent on in-house experts. When they move on, you have a problem.
  • In most larger networks, the workload is likely to be shared, maybe across different teams and different places – and fragmented – with several tools, not one system. Sharing creates extra effort of coordination, and can even lead to conflict between people or departments.

An integrated DDI solution like DNSBOX deals with these headaches and makes your life easier.

 

Let software do the work

A smart integrated DDI application makes DDI admin easier than tools like BIND or Windows DNS, because it does more of the work – so you do less.

The features of DDI management software which make it smarter are:

  • Graphical user interface – the way things are organised for you on the screen makes complex network information easier to picture and gives a more efficient workflow to tasks
  • Intelligence built in:
    • Automation – data entry takes a fraction of the time – no more entering same data more than once, minimum clicks
    • Validation, the software checks your data for you – much less to remember
  • The software provides efficient, joined up processes for all aspects:
    • Editing data and configurations for each of DNS, DHCP and IPAM
    • Matching the “plan” data in IPAM with the “actual” data in DNS and DHCP
    • Maintaining the server
    • Managing links with other servers in your DDI architecture
    • Allowing multiple administrators to share the work

As a result, DDI becomes radically simpler:

  • Much less to know and remember – the system helps you
  • Big times savings – the total workload becomes a fraction of what it was
  • Easier means less mistakes
  • Less expertise is needed – free up your most experienced people, transfer responsibility easily when they leave
  • Less friction between teams caused by coordination difficulties

Share workload, get better visibility

You get more control at all levels – in terms of:

  • Data – data entry and configuration is more disciplined
  • Who does what – the workload can be shared efficiently
    • Set restrictions and permissions for different users
    • Audit trails to show who edited what and when
  • End-results – better control of your network and IP address space
    • With all information held in a single centralised system and neat ways to view that information, it is much easier to see and understand what is happening with your DDI
    • With your IPAM plan automatically synchronised with the live data, it now works to guide IP address usage as intended

Ensure your DDI services are safe

An integrated DDI solution, particularly one built on a robust appliance platform like DNSBOX, deals with the threats to your DDI services and greatly reduces the risks:

  • Smart software cuts out damaging user errors
  • Many security features – on each appliance and in links between servers – guard against threats like unauthorised access to your data, cache poisoning or DoS attacks
  • Equipment failure should not bring your services down
    • Reliable appliance software and hardware means less chance of unit failure
    • Simple redundancy and recovery features make building robust DDI architectures easy


Next: DNS Management >

Because DNSBOX is versatile and scalable, our customers around the world come in all shapes and sizes. Some want to simplify, control and protect their DDI services, others just want to solve a specific DNS or DHCP headache.

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