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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
New Best Practices
for Future-ready Hybrid & Multicloud Network Strategies

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
About us
Men & Mice provides API-driven DNS, DHCP and
IPAM software solutions to global enterprise,
education and government organizations for effective
management, visibility, control, automation and
security of complex, hybrid IP infrastructure. Network
Managers in some of the world’s largest
organizations rely on Men & Mice to increase network
portability and adapt to changing network needs.

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
About me
Paul Terrill
Director, Sales Operations, North America
+10 years experience assisting enterprise and other large
scale organizations transition global networks to scale and
increase resilience.
Get in touch: paul.terrill@menandmice.com

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
What we’ll cover
• Pitfalls such as:
• Loss of control
• Compatibility hurdles
• Lost time and efficiencies
• Low visibility
• New best practices:
• Unifying management and visibility with overlays
• Adding security and control
• Automating and workflows
• Leverage service-native features (on-premise and cloud)
• Hybrid deployment scenarios and migration
Virtual appliances in cloud vs. using cloud-native services

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Engage DevOps, executive stakeholders
• Be the change agent not the reluctant network team
• Show advantages and risks for service adoptions
• Give transparent, unified reporting
• Rip and replace or, steady progress?
• Leverage everything while adapting the network
• Proactively prepare for change
• Direct integration
• What Orchestration tools and platforms (via plug-ins or adapters) are
ideal for Datacenter and private cloud automation?
• Workflows and reporting intelligence
• What’s making network (and business services) efficient? What’s
underperforming, causing hurdles?
DevOps + Network Team advantage

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Migration
Questions to consider:
• What is being migrated?
• Core network infrastructure services (DNS and DHCP)? Do the new
servers/solutions come with the same capabilities?
• Do you have automation?
• Using current platform API? How will this impact change?
• Same functionality?
• Does your new platform have it? Audit what you’re gaining and losing?
• Architectural differences?
• Do DHCP servers and DNS servers integrate between solutions? Is that
further complicated with cloud integrations?
• Is OS on the devices/services?
• Can it ensure access to corporate if internet connection goes down?

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
DHCP
Cisco IOS DHCP
• Uses split-scopes
• Client updates DNS on its own
• Simple configuration and option
management
• IOS is on the router, lending autonomy
should internet go down
Platform B
• Uses failover
• Takes care of the DNS registration
• Advanced, elaborate options you’ll
never use
• IOS lives elsewhere, dependent on
connectivity
Both DHCP solutions give out leases to clients but administration,
configuration and setup can be quite different:

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Virtual Appliances
3 reasons Network Managers put DNS servers/services in the cloud:
Authoritative for Internet-facing
zones
Why: Not on virtual infrastructure
Issue: Time building or strategizing
security, scalability and availability
Best: Use services like Amazon
Route 53, Akamai or other services to
host external zones.
Authoritative for internal zones
(available to hosts in the cloud)
Why: Dev servers point to appliance
Issue: Redundancy requires more
than one, and must be copied across
multiple VPCs and accounts
Best: Host zone as private zone in
Amazon Route 53, or use the Route
53 resolver.
Internet resolution to hosts in
the cloud
Why: Provide resolution by
putting VA in VPC or account
Issue: Rigid, old school, costly
and negates advantages of cloud
services
Best: Use cloud-native features.

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Homegrown
Can you productize your homegrown solution or sell it? No?
Don’t.
• Ownership
• Who owns? Are they retiring? Controls sophisticated enough?
• Functionality
• Maintenance and version update resilience
• New versions of software present new incompatibilities
• Accommodate new innovations?
• New functionality comes to market (like IPv6)
• Barrier to network transformation?
• Prickly and inflexible means bigger plan, more time for deployment
• Reluctance to change because the task and costs are too large
• stifles innovation, slows teams with mundane tasks, impacts
business efficiencies

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
APIs
Don’t fear the API
• APIs work best when they are
well strategized (not all APIs are
created equal)
• Automate the things that bog
teams down
• Liberate teams to focus on
business innovation and growth
• Compatibility shortens resolution
and increases overall efficiency
AI is not ready for primetime!

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
APIs
Automate the things that bog teams down
• Types of APIs:
– REST (fast performance, reliability and scalability)
– SOAP/XML (more rigid in execution)
– JSON-RPC (stuck in a different time)
Things to look out for:
• Is the API fast or will you just resort to SQL database
statements?
• Can you define your own workflows with point & click?
• Does it include all features/functions of Product Interface?
• Go through all the same channels as Interface Functions?
• Does it log all API-induced changes?

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Why Overlays?
High Availability
• Multiple regions/DCs, cloud VNETs/VPCs to ensure transparent, always-on
APIs and Workflows (REST APIs)
• Retain / add granular Access Controls to increase security
• Cuts implementation and task time from months to days and minutes
• Leverages Cloud 24/7 monitoring for DDI
When hell breaks loose
• Overlay is not authoritative for core network services
• Network will continue to operate even if DDI tool goes down
• When back online, an overlay will synchronize again
• Redundancy addresses and mitigates significant risk management concerns
Easier and quicker to plan, organize, optimize and delegate
hybrid & multicloud strategies

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Compatibility
Cisco IOS
ISC DHCP
ISC Kea
Microsoft DHCP
BIND
Microsoft DNS
PowerDNS
Unbound
Plug-in
Network App & subnet data
VMWare vRealize
Orchestrator
& Automation
Men & Mice included as
a Solution Provider in
Gartner's March 2019
research report “Solution
Comparison for
Enterprise DNS, DHCP
and IP Address
Management (DDI)
Solutions.”

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
“It's improved the way that
our 'customers' view us
because now we have a more
stable environment.
We have less errors, and we
are quicker to solve, quicker
to respond.
People bring up their
concerns, their problems and
we just fix it on the spot.”
Improving service levels and consolidate network
resources to reduce costs
• Critical network changes that used to take 30 minutes,
now take 1-3 minutes.
• Low-cost data in the cloud: very simple and fast to
migrate data to the most efficient storage platform, as
and when needed.
• Co-hosting networks on a single management platform
and co-housing equipment, which allows for better and
more efficient use of funds.
Icelandic Meteorological Office

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Advantages for Umbrella customers
Configure all internal DNS servers (resolvers) in one go
• Domain Controllers
• Dozens to as many as hundreds
• Visibility to correct servers not properly configured
Manage, synchronize, increase flexibility and security of
entire IP infrastructure
Bonus:
• Our community of large network customers means big data pool:
• ID operational trends across various implementations
• Quickly deploy solutions to customers with similar pain points

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Pitfalls to avoid
Using solutions that negate innovation by
telling you to ”buy more boxes” or “put more
VAs in the cloud.”
Solutions with slow APIs slow down your
network, team and increase costs
Wasting valuable talent on mundane task due to
solutions that don’t enable proper automation
Isolating your network into your on-premise, homegrown
or cloud provider kills visibility and increases
misconfigurations and security vulnerabilities.

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Copyright © 2019 Men and Mice ehf. All rights reserved.
Increase collaboration between DevOps, Network
and Executive teams to ensure company vision
comes to life
Leverage service-native features and uses
services that are highly compatible and
synchronize
Improve control granularity and customization
• Ensure complete, unified visibility throughout and
after migration
Ditch the homegrown IPAM
Decide to be innovative, a hybrid /multicloud
networked organization
Best practices

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