Infoblox tackles integrated DDI across multi-cloud environments

The distributed nature of the modern enterprise network makes it inefficient to manage without automated DDI tools. “Modern, enterprise-grade DDI platforms provide optimized connectivity to cloud-based platforms and advanced management tools for enabling the efficient and secure use of cloud-based services,” IDC stated.

Infoblox Universal DDI provides unified management of network services across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and it works seamlessly with public cloud DNS systems from AWS, Azure, and Google, Gupta said.

“It streamlines DNS, DHCP, and IP address management, automates asset discovery and analysis, and modernizes critical network services without requiring any customer-side Infoblox infrastructure,” Gupta said. “Optionally, customers can deploy virtual appliances for the DNS and DHCP protocol servers for specialized use cases such as local survivability.”

Gupta gave three examples of how DDI technologies work together:

• DHCP and IPAM: DHCP updates IPAM in real-time, preventing conflicts.
• DHCP and DNS: DHCP informs DNS of new IP leases, ensuring DNS name-to-IP mappings are current and are created/deleted automatically.
• IPAM and DNS: IPAM manages and reconciles the IP space with DNS records to ensure consistency and visibility.

Why DDI is complicated

With hybrid multi-cloud adoption, most enterprises end up with four or five different DNS systems – some example providers are Amazon Route53, Azure DNS, GCP DNS, Infoblox, and Microsoft. Managing multiple DNS systems with completely different user interfaces increases the risk of mistakes, leading to frequent and costly service disruptions, Gupta said. 

Another issue is that multi-cloud setups make it difficult to allocate IP addresses effectively across environments. NetOps teams lack visibility into cloud, which often results in wasted resources, Gupta said. In addition, limited visibility across cloud environments can create IP conflicts, triggering application downtime.