Sensible IPAM Part 3: Cloud integration

Next up in our IPAM series on creating a sensible environment from your scattered network resources, we examine how to tap into flexible and affordable cloud resources without losing money on the hidden costs of migration and misconfiguration.

Pitfalls of cloud adoption on infrastructure

Imagine that you are:

• A CTO of a global logistics company and your corporate network is diverse, due in large part to acquisitions, where workloads are in cloud, co-located and in your own data centers. Your warehouses around the world have to run independently, to ensure there are no service or operations interruptions, even if cut off from the rest of the network. How do you consolidate and synchronize between on-prem and cloud networks, even when a location goes offline?
• A network administrator and your company is tapping into cloud infrastructure for the first time. You’re tasked with overseeing workload migration and establishing processes for orchestration. Where do you start?
• The Director of Infrastructure Services at an IoT company providing personalized services for users. Privacy is paramount, and your solution relies on heavy cloud usage — but utilizing virtual machines on-demand is slow and customers experience issues. You identify that your on-prem DNS is the bottleneck.

From a business standpoint, the advantages of cloud services cannot be overstated. A driving message to IT Infrastructure and Operations leaders is to modernize, diversify and synchronize networks which is great news for customers of Micetro who capitalize on our compatibility with AWS and AWS Route 53, as well as other cloud vendors from an IPAM and DNS perspective respectively.  The modern strategy in networking is to align network architecture and operations with business logic and policy for more intelligent infrastructure.

This means capitalizing on and properly integrating cloud resources into existing networks and avoiding hidden and unexpected costs. Integrating is the hard part… or at least it used to be.

What You Need

Every network management solution must include some kind of integration with cloud services. There’s a difference, however, between cloud-native integration at the core and compatibility as a feature or an afterthought. Worse, forcing customers to retrofit antiquated solutions into cloud services as a means of retaining a revenue model destined for extinction.

Furthermore, compatibility with a range of cloud services (from AWS to Azure to others) is important: flexibility means little if it comes with a set of strings that lock your business in. You need portability. Your network will scale up, down, in and out faster than ever before. Adaptability is key. Plus, distributed resources and redundancy protect against DDoS and other failures.

Where Men&Mice Can Help

Micetro is an overlay solution for core of IP infrastructure management. Its flexibility as an overlay above the entire network, regardless of platform and environment, extends beyond on-prem, into cloud services as well.

Because Micetro handles network the same way, no matter the underlying setup or location, it’s especially suited to consolidate and synchronize, making management more efficient and automation easier. Further, its built-in reporting features (specifically audit trails) channel all network information from various resources through a central component, enabling quick, transparent data on what’s happening in your IP infrastructure and where.

If a part of the network becomes isolated, Micetro will then seamlessly sync and update once reconnected.

Another roadblock for business at the network level is incompatibility between cloud services.  Each vendor organizes data differently, with different APIs, which creates a need for specialized personnel, support services and added costs and can make moving workloads to or across cloud infrastructure frustrating at best and impossible at worst.

Micetro simplifies orchestration and automation through its reliable APIs, which are compatible with the best-in-class cloud services, even capitalizing on their cloud-native features.

It utilizes the existing service features to pull valuable Cloud IPAM and DNS information into a centralized management interface together with on-prem data. And all is done with minimal disruption, thanks to the software-based design and virtual appliances.

From AWS to Azure, from on-prem private clouds to public infrastructure, Micetro brings a holistic approach to network core management in the age of cloud. Its simplified operations workflow cuts out hidden costs and creates a single reliable management layer for DNS, DHCP, and IPAM.

In short, Micetro lets you scale your network to suit YOUR needs and we’ll focus on providing you with the management capabilities and observability, no matter what’s under the network hood and how it changes over time.

In our next post, we take a look at day-to-day network core management of IP infrastructure, and how we make that simple and straightforward as well.

Reach Out

We'd love to hear your suggestions for what kind of IPAM related content you would like to see from us. Alternatively, if you're looking to get started with your IP address Management (IPAM), you can sign up for your free trial! The beauty of an overlay is that you can install it completely risk-free.