BlueCat Address Manager for AWS

In the past, we did not have a DDI  system, so information was distributed in different places. As our environment became more complicated with on-campus, remote offices, and cloud setups, we wanted to integrate all the information together. We recognized the need for a DDI  system.

BlueCat Integrity provides a single pane of glass view for the IP address space, which is important for general planning, design, and implementation. As the environments become more complex, it is very hard to grab information from different places.

It has helped us avoid overlapping information, which is a major benefit as previously we picked up information from different places. We have largely been using IPAM and DNS, although the DNS migration into BlueCat is still in progress.

BlueCat Integrity has helped reduce human error by 20% to 30%.

BlueCat Integrity might have had some effect on reducing downtime or improving network stability. It is hard to measure the effect. Both these aspects are operations-related. If we avoid any overlap in the design and planning phases, generally, it can lower operational risk.

It is easy to use. It has an understandable GUI interface. Its deployment is relatively easy. I would rate it a nine out of ten for ease of use.

The license model of BlueCat Integrity  is easier to manage compared to Infoblox. 

The solution is too granular and sometimes complex to configure. We do not always need so many details. Simpler configurations with fewer details would be beneficial. 

The API aspect could be improved with more use cases and better handling of object attributes. It is already better than in previous versions. Their product team is planning further improvements in the upcoming version 9.6. 

Last month, we had a roadmap meeting with the BlueCat product team. There will be a lot of improvements in version 9.6 coming in the second half of 2025. We will then upgrade our system to that one. It will have quite a lot of new features.

We started testing it three to four years ago, and the system has been operational for around two to three years.

BlueCat Integrity  is quite stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I would rate the scalability of the solution a seven out of ten.

We have about 50 people working with this solution in the organization.

Their technical support is good. The previous solution that we were using was open source. 

BlueCat's technical support is a bit better than Infoblox's. They are quite responsive. They usually get back within one to two hours, or even faster for urgent issues. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We used phpIPAM for some programs, but for others, we only had Excel sheets, which were not ideal. 

phpIPAM is an open-source product, but it only functions as a pure IPAM without integration with DNS or DHCP. It was more of a documentation tool. We also tested NetBox for a while but did not use it in production.

We have a hybrid deployment model. The implementation was done over a period of six to eight months involving four to five people. It was neither too simple nor too complex.

In terms of maintenance, it requires upgrades every two to three months. The upgrades can be done in a few hours, but, normally, we schedule it across a week. We upgrade some of the things first and then upgrade the rest.

The implementation involved four to five people.

It has helped save time, money, and resources by 20% to 30%. As we are migrating other tools into this one, there can be 30% to 40% cost savings.

Our licensing model with BlueCat Integrity is cheaper than Infoblox.

We did a brief comparison of Infoblox and BlueCat.

I would recommend BlueCat Integrity to others. It is quite easy to use. The product's performance is stable, and support is good. 

The general documentation is also good. The API part can be improved a little bit. Overall, it is a good solution.

I would rate BlueCat Integrity a nine out of ten.

We have been a partner of BlueCat for two years now, and we are responsible for deploying the solution over the Middle East region. I have the most experience with BlueCat Integrity.

BlueCat Integrity is generally easy to use and administer, though the ease of use can vary depending on the user's experience level. Migration can be complex for beginners or those new to IT, but daily operation is straightforward.

BlueCat Integrity provides a single interface for managing IP address space, DNS, and DHCP within one console. Many organizations have separate consoles or teams for these functions, leading to unused IP space and a lack of awareness regarding its allocation. If team members leave, knowledge of this IP space is lost, resulting in wasted resources and inefficient management, especially when viewed from a cross-team perspective.

It provides immediate benefits by allowing us to easily migrate our existing files to its software. The software then automatically identifies any missing or misconfigured elements in our network environment, providing a comprehensive overview and improving overall efficiency.

The primary migration tool helps reduce human error by automating the transfer of existing network configurations into the BlueCat system. This tool simplifies the migration process and verifies configurations against industry best practices, highlighting potential issues. While BlueCat offers recommendations, it ultimately allows users to make informed decisions and retain specific configurations necessary for their unique environment, such as those required for certain products to function correctly.

BlueCat consolidates disparate network management tools. Organizations often rely on default Microsoft DNS and DHCP servers, which are separate tools within Active Directory, and manage IP addresses through the DHCP server. This results in three separate components with different consoles and configurations. BlueCat streamlines this by integrating all these functions into a single, unified platform.

It has helped organizations by providing automation features that can handle specific IT tasks, freeing up IT staff for other projects.

BlueCat reduces the total cost of ownership by automating tasks, which allows IT staff to focus on other projects instead of managing DNS and DHCP tools. Additionally, BlueCat consolidates functionalities into a single server, decreasing infrastructure costs associated with separate solutions and consoles. This automation and consolidation significantly reduce IT costs.

Once correctly configured and deployed, it offers significant relief through its automation capabilities. This automation enables features like automatic failover to redundant DNS or DHCP servers, eliminating concerns about server failures and ensuring service continuity. IP address management can also be automated based on device and location, further streamlining network administration. With proper configuration, BlueCat Integrity minimizes the need for ongoing manual intervention and reduces the administrative burden on network administrators.

The most valuable feature of BlueCat Integrity  is decentralized management, which enables real-time visibility and control over the entire IP address space, DNS, and DHCP from a single console. This feature is crucial for organizations.

The user interface could be improved, as the implementation of BlueCat can be complicated and requires personnel with expertise in DNS, DHCP, and IP management.

We have been a partner of BlueCat for two years.

BlueCat is a well-known, stable solution in the community, with an architecture designed for reliability. The appliance itself provides a clustered environment, so even if one service fails, there's no need for manual configuration or worry. This built-in redundancy minimizes service disruptions, ensuring your network runs smoothly at all times.

BlueCat Integrity's scalability depends on the type of appliance used, so we typically communicate with the customer to determine their IP address and DNS server needs. Virtual appliances offer inherent scalability by simply adding resources for smooth software operation, with performance contingent on the provided hardware specifications.

BlueCat's customer support, particularly its solutions team, has been excellent. While I've collaborated extensively with its partner team, including solution architects, I haven't needed to contact its general technical support.

Positive

We have seen customers using Infoblox and Microsoft IPAM, and we have migrated these customers to BlueCat. BlueCat is better because it provides a unique blend of features and flexibility.

Implementing BlueCat Integrity itself is straightforward, but migrating data from older configurations and consolidating solutions can be complex for those who aren't seasoned professionals.

The deployment of the solution itself takes about two or three hours. Migration depends on the size of the IP address management and can take nearly 24 hours.

The number of people required for deployment depends on their experience with the BlueCat solution. As an implementation service provider, we could deploy with two people at most. While the interface may seem complex to those unfamiliar with it, customers should also be able to deploy with two to three people: one with IP knowledge, one with DNS expertise, and one with DHCP experience. Ultimately, the most crucial requirement is someone who thoroughly understands the environment where the solution will be deployed.

I handle professional services as a partner, providing integration and migration support to customers in the Middle East. It typically requires two people to implement the solution.

BlueCat helps reduce IT cost because it automates many tasks. This automation frees up staff for other projects and consolidates several solutions onto a single server, reducing infrastructure costs.

I would rate BlueCat Integrity nine out of ten. The only negative is the complexity that can occur around migrations.

BlueCat is not typically used to directly prevent downtime. While its DNS functionality helps resolve domain names, this depends entirely on how it's configured within your organization or solution. BlueCat doesn't actively support downtime prevention. Although it aids in the handover process between multiple DNS or DHCP servers, it offers no active functionality to prevent downtime for a single DNS server.

Upgrading BlueCat Integrity requires some downtime, regardless of whether it's a physical or virtual appliance. The process involves setting up the new appliance and migrating the configuration from the old appliance. While virtual appliance migration typically takes under an hour, physical appliance upgrades require additional time for installation and initial setup. The configuration transfer is relatively quick, simply importing and exporting existing settings.

If someone believes they don't need a full DDI solution, I recommend they first verify their IP address management is accurate and all allocated addresses are being utilized effectively. They should also confirm their DNS is functioning correctly and that critical services are operating as expected. There's a high chance of misconfigurations or outdated settings that could lead to downtime or security vulnerabilities. This is where a dedicated DDI solution can provide comprehensive management and prevent potential issues.

New users should understand their organization's IP structure and DNS configurations before implementing BlueCat for a smooth experience. It is important to be familiar with DDI  technologies.

I use BlueCat Integrity  for end-to-end DDI  management, which includes DNS, DHCP, and IP management. It helps in creating domains, records, and networks. It serves IPs to specific hosts, simplifying life as a DDI  engineer. 

The overall benefit of using BlueCat Integrity is that it allows access to servers and troubleshooting of servers, which is not offered by some of the other market products. When you use BlueCat Integrity, you learn more than VDI. You get hands-on experience with Linux. You get to learn more things when you are using BlueCat Integrity. They also offer exceptional customer service.

BlueCat Integrity provides a single-pane-of-glass view of our IP address space. Within this single pane of glass, we can also have multiple views. I can create multiple subblocks and configure them, for example, country-wise.

It drastically reduces human error, reducing it by 80% to 85%.

BlueCat has helped our organization reduce downtime. We can monitor the online status of services with the help of SNMP. We can use all three SNMP variables, such as SNMPv1, SNMPv2, and SNMPv3. With the help of that, we can monitor server health.

It has helped save a huge amount of time in the domain and record creation process. It saves about 90% of our time.

BlueCat Integrity  has relieved engineers from manual tasks, freeing up time for other projects. It relieves engineers in a huge way. It relieves the DDI engineers from touching the Linux bind servers or DB servers. Using BlueCat Integrity saves a huge amount of time. With that time, we can handle other projects.

I use REST APIs. I create scripts, and we have our gateway, so we create our own gateway workflows. We use BlueCat automation to create around four to five thousand objects. It saves about two minutes per object.

The most valuable aspect is its user-friendly interface. It is straightforward to use. Even individuals with minimal DNS knowledge can easily work with BlueCat GUI.

It offers multiple additional services, such as Edge, K3, etc. We can integrate it with multiple applications and achieve more things. For example, we can use REST API with the help of GUI and achieve REST API construction in a single place. We can give it to multiple users to use it.

Some areas need improvement, especially the issue with stale entries in the BlueCat tenancy. I have heard that it is already fixed in BlueCat Integrity 10. I have not used that yet.

Additionally, they can integrate DIG into BlueCat Integrity.

I have been working with BlueCat Integrity for the past five to six years. I was also a BlueCat TAC engineer for about two years.

The stability of BlueCat is sometimes problematic. Every  two months, something breaks, and if not resolved immediately, it leads to downtime for several hours. In some situations, we get no answer from BlueCat because we cannot replicate the issue, but it still affects the organization. Recently, because of that, BlueCat Integrity was not available for anyone for at least two and a half hours. I would rate it a five out of ten for stability.

BlueCat is scalable, but it needs to be more robust. As an enterprise product, BlueCat needs to listen to customer feedback and make improvements where necessary.

We have more than 1,000 users in our organization. They are at multiple locations around the globe.

The technical support by BlueCat is excellent. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with multiple vendors like VitalQIP and Infoblox in different organizations.

BlueCat is more straightforward than others. If you know DNS, you can work with BlueCat GUI very easily. Other vendors are difficult to work with for someone new, whereas with BlueCat Integrity, within 30 to 40 minutes, you can do basic things. It is more user-friendly. BlueCat's GUI interface and customer support set them apart from others. It does not require a lot of DDI knowledge.

Infoblox is a more robust product. BlueCat needs to reach that level. I worked with Infoblox for nearly a year, and I did not have to contact their TAC, whereas I have to contact BlueCat TAC every one or two months with a high priority.

I was not involved in its deployment. If you know DDI, you can easily work with BlueCat Integrity.

The maintenance part is hard, but that is not because of BlueCat; that is because of technology. DNS has many vulnerabilities. We have to patch or upgrade the server every three to six months. We cannot avoid that.

I would recommend a DDI solution like BlueCat Integrity if you have more than 100 users at multiple locations.

BlueCat provides plugins for various applications, such as ServiceNow and Cisco Umbrella. They have plugins for many applications, but we do not use these plugins. BlueCat Integrity is a very easy tool. If you know what you are doing, you can do it in a minute.

I would rate BlueCat Integrity an eight out of ten.

We use BlueCat appliances and the Integrity platform for our DHCP environment. That's on the internal side. All of our DHCP for hospitals throughout the country are managed by BlueCat. The external DNS, also. We're authoritative for all of our own DNS zones. So we use BlueCat on the outside for public, DNS.

Better uptime than Windows due to patching.  Single Pane of glass for managing enterprise wide DHCP.

The most valuable aspect of the solution would be separation from the Windows operating system. Prior to our BlueCat usage, we were doing Windows DHCP and Windows DNS on the outside. Not being dependent on the Windows operating system, which routinely needs patching, reboots, et cetera, is great. Our BlueCat environment is now free of any of those vulnerabilities of Microsoft.

Integrity is largely easy to use. It depends on whether you're coming from a Windows, Linux, or Unix background. If you have a background with Unix-based DHCP or name services, it's a little easier to adopt. Coming from a Windows background, where you traditionally use Windows for either of these functions, it's not hard. However, it's easier if you already have Linux or Unix experience.

We witnessed the benefits of Integrity almost immediately. Since we had to reboot our Windows servers every month for patching, and with the new updates coming out for the Windows environment on a monthly basis - it was challenging. After switching to BlueCat, we don't have to reboot just for the patch. We can deploy. And since we run a high availability platform we can take one node down and still keep services alive without production impacts.

Integrity provides very close to a single pane of glass view of our IP address space. It would be more so if we were more prudent. It has the potential. A single pane of glass is a buzzword. It's very common. Everybody's looking for that. It would be nice if we were diligent and disciplined enough to record everything in our BlueCat environment. However, we don’t.

Integrity helps reduce human error, more or less.

Integrity helped us to reduce downtime. Given that, in a Windows environment, if we are following our best practice of patching on a monthly basis, that's about an hour or a month. We used to have a few hours a month per device or a couple of hours a month per device. Now we just don't have any downtime. We've reduced our downtime by 100%.

Integrity helped consolidate tools in that we now have a much better configuration standard. It is BlueCat. It's all BlueCat. No more Windows, Linux, DHCP servers, aside from Bluecat BDDS.  So, the configuration standard is being met and achieved every time, whereas there was always an opportunity to not maintain a standard when we were doing individual configurations.

BlueCat helped us free up IT staff for other projects to some extent. Not a substantial amount - and not really a measurable amount. We do have two primary engineers who operate this environment, and their workloads have certainly gotten better to where they can spend time doing other things.

Integrity helped us to improve the network stability due to a lack of downtime. If we're not having downtime when we're rebooting a Windows DHCP server, that means the clients continue to operate as they're expected without downtime failures.

BlueCat saved us money in terms of a life-and-death scenarios and the stress factors that surround a healthcare environment. We generally don't have downtime in our DHCP environments anymore. The clinics and the hospitals can continue to operate and not be in that position to be down. DHCP is a core NECESSARY service that you don't miss till it's not working.    And sometimes, that does mean that there are lives on the line. So from a medical hospital health care stance, absolutely saves us. I don't know if you can put a price on life, however, for our use case, it's pretty significant for us.

We're still reviewing our architecture and design. We are having some challenges when it's integrated into our VMware environment. We've fixed a lot of those issues. That said, we're still going through an architectural review to make sure that our high-availability design is going to be okay. High availability is an area of weakness. In terms of questions such as what does it take to produce high availability, and what is the configuration standard that must be met to maintain the high availability, we've had some challenges there.

There are multiple ways you can achieve high availability. We're using one that they call xHA, a crossover high-availability heart beat network.  xHA was not designed for a virtual environment, yet we are using it in a virtual environment. So we're trying to figure out ways to make that better.

Challenges with xHA in a Virtual Environment, when you have multiple BDDS on the same physical host, you can run into oddities and service stoppage.

UPDATE:  After extensive exploration and meeting with both Bluecat Architectural groups and within our own architectural groups, we've identified that our usage of xHA for Virtual environments is not a recommended method.  We'll be correcting that over the next 6-12 months and moving to an Active/Active solution via Bluecat.  If you're using Physical Appliances, consider xHA.  But in Virtual environments, use Active/Active.

I've been using the solution for about four years. 

Aside from some challenges, mostly due to virtualization, it is a very stable environment.

We're running over 300 devices, and our scale is rather large. We're shrinking our platform in terms of how many of these devices we have out there. Scalability, I would presume, is just fine. We scaled out right away in a fairly large enterprise, and it did very nicely.

I contact support maybe once a month.

They are amazing. Just recently, I was able to upgrade our support contract as we found that the basic offering of support included with licensing was not adequate for our needs. Since we have gone to their premier level of support, we're having monthly cadence meetings. They're continually doing health assessments and checks, and we're getting ready to do a whole new architectural review. Support has been very nice, not that we've gotten to their premier tier. Prior to that, it was hit or miss.

Our support here through BlueCat, due to the nature of our support contract, is very personalized. We have a dedicated team who understands our environment and our needs, and it's not a reinvention. We don't have to train guys each time we contact them. In contrast, with Microsoft, you get the luck of the draw. You might get a very knowledgeable engineer in the beginning. None of them are ever familiar with your environment, so they won't know the ins and outs. So with the custom team or dedicated team that is just responsible for our environment, these guys are very good. Microsoft doesn't really offer that.

Positive

Prior to running BlueCat, we ran Windows, Microsoft DHCP, and Microsoft DNS.

With BueCat, you get much more of a single pane of glass. You get a true high availability, and you get to divorce the primary services of DNS and DHCP from Windows so that you don't have to worry about patch management of Windows devices. You're not dependent on Microsoft anymore. And the high uptime seems to be much better for us.

The deployment, for a large enterprise can be challenging. We definitely took our time over the course of two years to cycle through and deploy BlueCat. It was just more schedule coordination.

For 150+ hospitals, it took us almost two years to deploy. We had two engineers working on the deployment process, both of whom are no longer with the organization.

The bad part is that, at the time, the purchasing decision was made to implement BlueCat on our own without the assistance of BlueCat Professional Services. I can't really speak to their professional implementation services. We did it on our own.

By way of uptime, we have reduced our total cost of ownership.

The peace of mind that BlueCat Integrity  provides is much better. Especially on the uptime and being challenged with how to balance downtime for patching requirements versus just continual operations. From that perspective, BlueCat is is not quite set and forget, however, it is very close to set and forget.

Everybody wishes everything was cheaper, of course. However, for our enterprise our contract is under half a million dollars a year, so that's pretty good for the size of the organization. Their pricing is reasonable. 

We did not really look at other options previous to this solution. 

To those individuals at an organization who don't think that they need a full-stack integrated DDI  management solution, I'd say the biggest selling point is availability and uptime. If you have to patch a Windows operating system, which is probably the largest competing product to BlueCat in the typical enterprise, if you have to worry about Windows patching, all those problems disappear.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I'd advise new users to get professional services engaged as quickly as they can. Don't try to manage it individually very complex organizations, and don't try to just learn it overnight. Spend a little bit of money and engage with professional services to get them to help you through your migration path.

Our company provides network infrastructure management services for ten clients. We handle DNS, DHCP, and IPAM for these clients, all utilizing the BlueCat Integrity platform.

The most effective features for IP management are log reviews and configuration management.

BlueCat Integrity is easy to use but it can be time-consuming. It has improved our troubleshooting. We can go to the server and see the logs.

BlueCat Integrity has helped reduce downtime andhas saved 50 percent of our time.

It has streamlined our IT team's workflow, freeing up valuable time for other projects. The intuitive user interface simplifies the process of provisioning IP addresses to customers.

We recommend the BlueCat automation to our customers because it saves almost 50 percent of our time. Through the self-service portal, our customers can complete their requests themselves.

BlueCat Integrity helped improve network stability.

The professional DNS and support service helps integrate BlueCat Integrity.

The most valuable features of BlueCat Integrity are the user-friendly UI and the permission management.

A common complaint about BlueCat is that adding new features or making even small changes requires a full deployment process, which can be time-consuming. This is especially problematic for deployments using SSP (hidden primary), the business-critical DNS server, which can take up to seven minutes to deploy depending on network size.

Unfortunately, BlueCat Integrity doesn't support bulk Content Security Policy configuration. We'll need to set these policies manually for each element or develop a script to automate the process.

I have been using BlueCat Integrity for two and a half years.

I would rate the stability of BlueCat Integrity eight out of ten. At times we get high utilization on some servers. 

I would rate the scalability of BlueCat Integrity ten out of ten.

The technical support is responsive and they have resolved any issues we have had.

Positive

We previously implemented Infoblox and it remains in use, but we've also added BlueCat Integrity to our network management toolset. We prefer the integration and automation in BlueCat.

While BlueCat Integrity is easy to deploy, the overall deployment time varies based on network complexity. New customers can be up and running in two weeks, but migrating existing configurations from Infoblox to BlueCat Integrity can take up to three months. This is because the migration involves a staged approach, transitioning DNS settings first, then DHCP, and finally finalizing DNS changes.

BlueCat Integrity is more cost-effective than Infoblox.

I would rate BlueCat Integrity eight out of ten.

The majority of our clients who use BlueCat Integrity are enterprise customers.

Once BlueCat Integrity is deployed there is no maintenance required.

We did not face any challenges when integrating BlueCat Integrity into our client's systems.

Even for organizations hesitant about needing a full-suite DDI management solution, BlueCat Integrity's time-saving features and cost-effectiveness make it a compelling choice. I recommend BlueCat Integrity to others.