Infoblox Inc. today announced it has expanded its portfolio of solutions with Infoblox IPAM Insight, an advanced IP address management (IPAM) product that bridges the management gap between physical and virtual networks.
Virtual Environments Breed Network Change and Complexity
As enterprises strive to scale their virtualization deployments beyond simple virtual server deployment to support dynamic workloads and private cloud infrastructures, they are encountering explosive rates of change and growing complexity in the physical network.
In the virtual data center, administrators can re-provision processing power with a single click. Without automation, the many next-steps to re-provision the supporting network infrastructure are arduous and resource-intensive, such as firewall settings, QoS settings, policy settings, and other network changes that must be done to both physical and virtual network elements to support the virtual data center.
While the rate of change and complexity is growing, most IT department staff and resources are not. As a result, IT teams need to embrace more automation, such as migrating from spreadsheets and manual processes for tracking IP addresses to an automated, commercial solution that can scale in a dynamic virtual environment where virtual instances of servers and machines are dynamically provisioned, migrated and shut down or destroyed.
Daniel Boyd, IT administrator at Berry College commented: “Virtualization has been touted as the best thing since sliced bread in terms of cost savings and flexibility. We have realized part of that promise. But, there have been some visibility and management issues. It’s still daunting to know where everything is and it would be helpful to have a single application that shows us where all the resources are — which virtual machine is on what host with all the information in a single view — instead of having to check five different management applications to find the information I need. For this reason, we see a real value for more automated network tools like Infoblox IPAM Insight to help us view everything through a single pane of glass and ultimately realize our end goals with virtualization.”
Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President and Distinguished Research fellow, added: “Throughout a virtual machine lifecycle, there are multiple events that require visibility and change; most server-centric functions for managing this are built into the hypervisors, but the flip side of the coin causing tremendous complexity as enterprises try to scale their virtual deployments are the associated network changes that are typically performed manually. Automated technology is the only way to overcome this hurdle.”
Ultimately, investments in virtualization cannot fully pay off without corresponding investments in a more flexible, automated network with visibility, change management and compliance capabilities encompassing both the physical and virtual environments.
IPAM Insight: The Only Tool to Bridge the Virtual and Physical Network Gaps
IPAM Insight is an extension to the Infoblox IP Address Management solution that further automates the collection and management of IP addresses and combines it with rich network details. The single unified management interface provides real-time, detailed network discovery and visibility into the heterogeneous physical and virtual network elements at Layer 2 and Layer 3. Tracking the linkage between the physical infrastructure and the virtual machines as they are created, moved and torn down, allows enterprise IT teams to:
- Determine which virtual machines (and corresponding applications) will be affected if a top of rack switch is brought down for updates;
- Determine if a virtual machine is facing performance issues since migrating to an ESX server connected to a slower switch port; and,
- Trace network performance issues for a virtual desktop user all the way from the data center to the desktop.
Infoblox Enables the New Dynamic IT Environment
As enterprises IT teams move from static to dynamic networks with virtualization and private cloud deployments, Infoblox is committed to provide the essential network infrastructure automation and control required to realize the full advantages of these initiatives.
Infoblox IPAM Insight is the newest demonstration of Infoblox’s ongoing commitment, underscored by previous milestones, including Infoblox’s introduction of vNIOS™ for VMware®, the company’s operating system optimized for VMware that allows deployment of a virtualized instance of an Infoblox appliance; Infoblox’s acquisition in May 2010 of Netcordia, a leading network change and configuration management company, that brings to the portfolio automated and detailed network discovery, change and monitoring capabilities essential in increasingly dynamic environments; and, Infoblox’s Force 10 and VMware TAP partnerships, among others.
Steve Nye, Infoblox Executive Vice President of Product Strategy and Corporate Development commented, “Complexity resulting from expanded virtualization and private cloud deployments is compromising enterprise IT departments’ ability to realize the full benefit of these initiatives, but network infrastructure automation can provide the missing link. Infoblox is uniquely suited with real-time core network services, change management and discovery capabilities to provide enterprise IT departments real-time, dynamic solutions to harness the complexity and maximize benefits of virtualization and private cloud.”
For more Information about IPAM and Virtualization, view a whitepaper here:
https://www.infoblox.com/en/resources/white-papers/virtualization.html
Pricing and AvailabilityInfoblox IPAM Insight is now available on the Infoblox-1102 appliance platform. Pricing for IPAM Insight starts at $14,995 in the United States.
About Infoblox
Infoblox is an industry leading developer of network infrastructure control solutions. Infoblox’s unique technologies, including the Infoblox Grid™—a real-time, data distribution technology—increase network availability and control, while automating time-consuming manual tasks associated with network infrastructure services like domain name resolution (DNS), IP address management (IPAM), network change and configuration management (NCCM) and network discovery, among others. Infoblox solutions are used by over 4,500 organizations worldwide, including more than one third of the Fortune 500. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and operates in more than 30 countries.