BlueCat DNS and DHCP Server for AWS

BlueCat Integrity 's primary use case includes DDI  records in my day-to-day work. To be specific, I manage DDI  DNS records, modify, create, and delete DNS zones and sub-zones, then handle DHCP reservations, and process tickets that come through.

The monitoring capabilities in BlueCat Integrity  are exceptional; everything is available and easy to access. There are options where you can quickly check the syslog and other resources, making troubleshooting straightforward.

Bluecat Integrity is very user-friendly, and all the options are integrated and clear, which is one of the things I appreciate about it. There are shortcuts for creating DNS entries in BlueCat Integrity, and this automatically generates PTR records while also validating whether the IPs are in use. Those capabilities are very easy to demonstrate and implement; they are visible on the screen. I have used other DDI tools such as VitalQIP, and those are not this easy and user-friendly.

Bluecat Integrity is very useful when I am troubleshooting an incident, saving significant time when I review logs and everything. I can quickly track the audit log, which is really valuable. The UI is structured very logically, and the configuration hierarchy is straightforward. The network blocks and zones are clearly organized, which is something I appreciate. Additionally, the permissions and roles help separate administration responsibilities, which is also a great feature. Overall, the integration between DNS, DHCP, and IPAM combined with the centralized visibility and control works well for my day-to-day DDI operations.

One thing that I miss in BlueCat Integrity is that for a DDI record that is added and deleted, in InfoBlox, you do not usually need to deploy; it just gets added and everything processes automatically. Here  you have to deploy the server responsible for that zone, so that is an area that could be improved if possible. The other thing is that managing PTR records and the reverse zone is much simpler in InfoBlox than in BlueCat Integrity, so that aspect is something that could be improved.

BlueCat Integrity is stable.

Regarding scalability, I would say it is one of the strong areas from my experience.

The customer support is great.

In my previous organization, I was using different DDI tools, but here BlueCat Integrity has been used from the beginning. When I had a discussion with the management, they evaluated TCPwave, EfficientIP, and also checked InfoBlox before settling with BlueCat Integrity.

My advice to organizations considering BlueCat Integrity is to have a clear understanding of their DNS, DHCP, IPAM architecture and operational process before any implementation or switching of tools. BlueCAT Integrity works very well in environments where management is centralized, and visibility and governance are important, especially for medium to large enterprise networks; for small enterprises, I do not think it is that useful. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

I work as a SOC for DDI . I have been working in this domain for the last nine years, and my total experience is 12 years. I have been using BlueCat Integrity  to host our DDI  services for one of our elite customers in the aviation industry. We use BlueCat Integrity  to manage internal domains, domain records, and their zones, and we are managing their DHCP scopes for more than 170 sites. We used BlueCat Integrity over Infoblox solution to migrate all the services from Infoblox's legacy solution to BlueCat Integrity.

BlueCat Integrity is a straightforward tool that supports all the basic requirements to host DDI services. One of the best features is its ability to have at least three BAM  servers in a redundancy failover setup, which really helped to make the BAM  highly resilient. In case two of your main sites go down, it can failover to the third site, which is very effective in case of a disaster recovery. Overall, BlueCat support is also good. We received relevant support from the BlueCat product team for whatever issues we faced during the implementation of the product, and it was up to the mark.

BlueCat Integrity supports automation via REST API, with which we were able to automate the standard DNS workflow request by using Python scripts in which API V2 version was very helpful. They have a built-in Swagger portal which helps to simulate API calls, and using that, it was pretty easy to design the framework and the code to implement DNS automation.

BlueCat Integrity has really brought a positive impact on the new environment because the ease of implementation and the support from the product team was very good. We were able to implement BlueCat Integrity with their other different products including BlueCat Gateway  solution, with which we were able to put different uses of DNS in different categories.

BlueCat Integrity overall is a very mature product. However, the console and the web interface do require built-in features which they have improved in their 25.0 version.

They need an improvement in out-of-the-box features wherein they can enable the backup feature to be taken from the GUI itself. The documentation also lacks in the basics of providing what needs to be configured while implementing that solution.

BlueCat Integrity does not offer all the features out of the box, and the customization with BlueCat is very limited. One has to be very clear with their requirements in terms of what they want to achieve in the target design before making a purchase decision.

Overall, this is a good tool, though it needs a lot of improvement in terms of customization and helping customers to effectively deploy the environment according to their requirements. They need to pick up on the areas where other OEMs are pretty good, such as having Kea-based DHCP engine.

I have been using BlueCat Integrity for the past three years.

BlueCat Integrity is stable.

In terms of scalability, we can deploy the servers on demand, and if we have the virtual infrastructure up and ready, we can scale without a need for licensing because our current business licensing model is not on the basis of the number of handles.

BlueCat customer support is really friendly. We have a weekly call set up with BlueCat support team wherein they address all the open issues in our environment. In case we need immediate support with any issue, they engage the engineering team and try to resolve it as soon as possible.

Customer support is good. As we are on the platinum services support model, we get a turnaround time to attend to any issues.

Previously, we used Infoblox NIOS  solution. The reason for switching from Infoblox to BlueCat was the business split in the customer environment. Infoblox was a legacy solution and was retained by a different business. BlueCat was the new OEM used in the new business setup.

The process for migration from Infoblox to BlueCat Integrity was easy and yet complicated because we had BlueCat support and professional support, but we did all the migration during specific change timelines. We used to open each site which hosts a local DHCP and DNS solution. We migrated on a site-by-site basis. It was a pretty streamlined process because there was a transition team who did a discovery for the entire site and informed us about how many scopes and what domains are in use for that site. We staged all the required DHCP scopes, IP addresses, and DNS domains along with the records before the migration window, and on the day of the migration window, we only needed to update the DHCP helper address. Once the traffic came to the new DHCP server, the new DHCP server gave the new DNS server information, which cut over the entire traffic for that site.

There were many times where we had a requirement to import bulk configuration to take over the sites from the legacy environment to the new environment. We used to reach out to the professional services team with raw data in the desired format, which they would digest, and within a couple of days, we would get the XML file which BlueCat migration engine supports. We would import that file and make the environment stage before the big migration day. We got help from the BlueCat support team in this way. There were many times we reported bugs in the product, which they were able to identify with the help of their engineering team and they opened the product enhancement feature or were able to provide the fix for that issue in the next hotfix.

We did see a return on investment as we only have a team of six who are managing BlueCat Integrity infrastructure 24/7, and with the help of automation, we were able to reduce the headcount as we automated most of the requests using BlueCat Integrity API.

I was not a part of pricing, setup cost, and licensing as it was done by the customer itself.

We did see a cost reduction in overall infrastructure as BlueCat Integrity offered services at much more effective rates compared to other OEMs.

We did evaluate different products including EfficientIP and Infoblox.

We are using BlueCat Integrity's robust APIs to automate our DNS standard changes for adding DNS records including A records, CNAME records, and PTR records. We are also using APIs to automate the IP allocation and DHCP requests.

We are not using BlueCat Integrity's intelligent NetOps capability in our environment.

BlueCat Integrity performed a very good job in meeting the hybrid environment requirements and met my expectations. I would rate this review as a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for BlueCat Integrity  is managing IP addresses and managing DNS, which was the primary focus for using BlueCat.

I actually used BlueCat Integrity  for several different projects where we had to create a new DNS name for the website and also to add an IP address for that site, which was the main case. From there, we were creating new IP addresses, adding or matching DNS names, and that was the extent of my usage.

In my opinion, the best features BlueCat Integrity offers are automation. However, I wouldn't say the user interface is friendly—it's very complex, and I found myself stuck a couple of times finding some features that I wanted to find, even very simple features. So I wouldn't say it's user-friendly, but definitely automation, reporting, and integration are very fast and convenient to set up. The interface should be more intuitive and more user-friendly.

The features are fine, as I mentioned before. Just the interface itself has to be improved, and that's my opinion.

BlueCat Integrity has definitely impacted our organization positively by improving visibility. I wouldn't say it reduced errors, as we had a colleague who unfortunately didn't know BlueCat well and made a couple of mistakes that actually brought the site down for Loyalty One. We had to find a workaround and fix it. Visibility I would say improved, but because of the main issue that BlueCat has—which is the user-unfriendly interface—it made my coworker make a huge mistake. Other than that, everything else is fine.

Improved visibility has helped my team track resources more easily, which I would say is very good and very helpful.

BlueCat's approach to customer relationships has definitely influenced my experience with their services positively, as communication was better, and we had everything in place. We used only one service instead of five or six different tools, making it easier because integration covers everything in BlueCat. This definitely improved our efficiency and communication between teams, as many teams were involved in servicing and administering BlueCat, so it was much easier for us to complete one part of the work and then let the other teams continue.

I would say BlueCat Integrity can be improved by enhancing the web interface itself. Some parts could be more intuitive and maybe packed in one place instead of being scattered around.

The needed improvements cover just the web interface, which I would definitely improve, as everything's a little scattered around. Perhaps the different features can be consolidated in one place.

I have been working in my current field for the last three to three and a half years.

BlueCat Integrity was stable.

The scalability of BlueCat Integrity was fine. I liked it—it was very effective and scales up as much as needed, whatever the case may be. I would say from one to ten, it's an eight or a nine.

My experience with customer support was very good. We had not major issues, only minor ones working with BlueCat and their support team. We had premium support, obviously at additional cost, but they were very responsive and helpful with various cases we had. I would rate customer support an eight or nine for sure as that was the good part about BlueCat.

I would rate customer support an overall nine.

I haven't evaluated other options before choosing BlueCat Integrity, as BlueCat was already established in our company, and they never switched to anything else. I'm not sure about other options before BlueCat as there might have been some, but I know that they chose BlueCat probably because of its features. Although the user interface isn't as friendly, it's still great because instead of using five tools, you have one.

There was a return on investment. I'm not sure about the money saved, but probably the consolidation of five different tools into one BlueCat solution did provide savings. I wasn't sure about time saved, as a lot of people struggled with the user interface, which was a missing point when using BlueCat. Many people were involved in using BlueCat, so I wouldn't say there were fewer employees needed—maybe more employees were needed than fewer.

I couldn't say much about BlueCat's licensing model as I wasn't the main person or a decision-maker on how the license should be applied and how much budget should be allocated. I think the product itself is not that expensive, and it is very useful, and the renewal process is very easy. I wouldn't say it's expensive, and it helped a lot to comply and to have all the things, especially with the DNS and IP addresses, finished in no time.

I can't tell you much about pricing, setup cost, and licensing as I was the end user of BlueCat. I heard that it wasn't that expensive, and what BlueCat offered for the price was very worthwhile.

My advice for others looking into using BlueCat Integrity is that it is definitely a good product and worth the money. It has a lot of good features, probably improved features since I used BlueCat. Everything is combined in one tool, which is great. However, it's not easy to use, and as I mentioned before, it requires some improvements. Overall, it's a very good product. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.