Immediate ROI with the Men&Mice Suite during transition to Open Source DHCP

Texas Woman's University (TWU) is a major multi-campus U.S. public university, primarily for women. Its campuses in Denton, Dallas and Houston are joined by an e-learning campus offering innovative online degree programs in business, education and general studies.

Situation:

This University needed better control and increased flexibility for a variety of network administration tasks, with the immediate need being a smooth transition from Windows to Open Source DHCP.

"Managing the Transition to Open Source DHCP “A Major Selling Point.”

“I am a proponent of open source technology,” said the College’s Lead Network Administrator, “and converting to Linux had been on my list of goals for a long while. I’d built a test Linux DHCP server, but I ran into some difficulties modeling the database migration.” So he did what any network administrator might do: he went looking for help online. “Basically I was trying to convert things cleanly and completely from Windows to Linux, and I was looking for a tool that would help me do that. I posted my needs on message boards and got a recommendation from another network administrator: “Try Men&Mice”. Not only did it help him make a smooth transition to Linux, but he adds, “I was able to get much better control over my Windows DHCP server right away. We are now running all of the DNS servers through the Men&Mice management console, as well. I am very happy with it.”

While helping the University accomplish their transition to Open Source DHCP, Men&Mice also expedited their ROI by also helping them to get a handle on their IP address management which was still being handled on an excel spreadsheet. “Men&Mice Really Simplifies the IPAM Management Piece.”

In addition, the robust API that Men&Mice includes was used to mitigate DNS coding errors and security concerns by automating DNS procedures previously not possible in the home grown application they were using. To accelerate the shortened ROI,  the University also used the tool to help clean up stale PTR records in a minimal amount of time which was “a huge benefit and time savings”.

The Results:

“A Significant Benefit for us.”

From a network administrator’s perspective, success can be measured in a number of ways, and for the University Office of Technology, one of the most meaningful measures is user satisfaction. “We are here to facilitate people’s education. Our students are here to better their lives, and we are here to support them. It’s an important mission, and when technology problems interfere with that, people will let you know quickly. Since we installed the Men&Mice Suite, I haven’t heard a thing.”

Read the full case study on how TWU, with the Men&Mice Suite, put their focus on facilitating people’s education instead of mundane network management and troubleshooting tasks.