Articles

Men&Mice Suite version 6.6 released

The new release focuses on usability enhancements and DNS Security features.

May 15th, 2014

Men&Mice, a leading provider of DDI solutions, announces the release of the Men&Mice Suite version 6.6 along with added functionality for the Men&Mice Appliances.

The new release focuses on usability enhancements and DNS Security features, further ensuring that the Men&Mice Suite retains its position as one of the most reliable and user - friendly solutions available.

Highlights in version 6.6:

Utilization of static subnets displayed in the Management Console and the Web UI
Real-time utilization of static subnets is now displayed in the user interfaces, which allows users and administrators to quickly see the utilization percentage of the subnets. The utilization information can be copied out from the console for easy reports and the users can furthermore sort and filter by the utilization. Filtering of the utilization can be combined with other filters so the user can, as an example, get a list of all subnets of a specific size, or of a specific type that are more than 85% utilized.

Smart-filters
With the addition of Smart-filters one of the most popular features of the Men&Mice Suite has now become even more powerful. The user can save filters and place them in "smart" folders. The user can also right-click the filter, change its name and the filter statement. Filters created by the "administrator" user are global, i.e. they are visible by all users.

Support for RPZ (DNS Firewall)
Men&Mice now support the Response Policy Zone framework in BIND, which is the underlying mechanism of DNS Firewalls. Administrators can create and define RPZ zones with the Men&Mice Suite or, via the tool, configure the DNS servers to subscribe to RPZ feeds from trusted sources.

SNMP Profiles and SNMPv3
Multiple SNMP profiles can now be created. This allows enterprises with complex networks that use the Men&Mice Suite to pull discovery information from routers that belong to different security realms to create a profile for each realm. With the addition of SNMPv3, profiles can be for version 1, 2c or 3 and can contain different settings, such as authentication and community strings.

Appliance diagnostic access
The Men&Mice Appliances, both DNS/DHCP and Caching, now have a read-only diagnostic shell access that can be used to run troubleshooting commands (such as dig, drill, etc.) and to gather information and logs from the appliances. The access is read-only so no changes can be made to the configuration or data on the appliances using the diagnostic access.

Backup and restore of appliances
The Men&Mice Central now stores a backup of full configuration and data from all the managed appliances. Full backups are taken daily and incremental backups are taken each time a change is made on the appliances. If an appliance were to become unavailable for some reason, a new appliance can be configured with the same IP address as that appliance. All configurations, including DNS and DHCP data, network configuration and other settings is restored from the backup to the new appliance making it identical to the previous one.