Three network admin challenges for 2012

06 Jan 2012

DDI tools for managing core network services and IP addresses may see far wider take-up in 2012, say independent IT analysts. Jessica Twentyman looks at the reasons why network admins are facing more pressure - and require more automation - than ever before. 

In 2012, smaller companies that previously considered these tools beyond their reach or their budgets may find themselves with little option but to invest, according to recent predictions from two independent market analyst firms, Yankee Group and Forrester Research.

DDI is an umbrella term applied to products for controlling core Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services, and for IP address management (IPAM). Suppliers in this market include Alcatel-Lucent, BlueCat Networks, BT DiamondIP and Infoblox.

These companies can maybe look forward to healthy revenues from DDI in 2012, because three trends are driving a massive transformation in the complexity of IP address management and the scale of DNS queries and DHCP transactions on even quite simple corporate networks. As a result, the make-do-and-mend approaches frequently used by network admins won’t cut it for much longer, warns Forrester analyst Andre Kindness in a December 2011 blog on the subject. “Infrastructure and operations professionals will have to quickly wean their administrators off manual, script-based, or kludgy homegrown tools soon if they’re going to be ready.”

The three trends are: 

1. Cloud and virtualisation. As organisations increasingly virtualise their data centres, and from there, start to build private clouds, the movement of virtual machines (VMs) from one server to another places huge demands on core network services. “Starting a VM requires many DNS queries, and starting or moving a VM frequently requires reconfiguration of the network, including configuring a switch, VLAN, router, firewall and load balancer,” says Zeus Kerravala, a Yankee Group affiliate analyst. Likewise, each time a corporate endpoint accesses a third-party service hosted by a cloud provider, he adds, “up to 10 DNS requests are made.”

2. Increased use of mobile and non-IT devices. “Mobile devices add a whole new level of complexity and stress on the movement of IP addresses, but the increasing amount of IP addresses per-person will cause huge strains,” says Kindness of Forrester. This will only increase, he predicts, as organisations increasingly use the IP network to convey data traffic generated by HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) sensors, manufacturing equipment and other devices. The average amount of IP addresses will skyrocket to between 20 and 30 per person in many companies, he predicts.

3. The emergence of IPv6. “Besides IPv4 addresses running out, there are missed revenue and market opportunities for organizations that don’t start the transition,” says Kindness. But they’ll need to be aware that IPv6 networks have at least twice the number of subnets, over 10 times the number of IP addresses, at least twice the number of DNS queries and double the DHCP transactions as their IPv4 predecessors, according to Yankee Group’s Kerravala.

So will your company need to make an investment in DDI in 2012? For Kindness of Forrester, the answer lies in the following questions, and a ‘yes’ answer to any of them means it may be time to consider DDI: If you put in a service ticket to allocate IP addresses, on average, does it take more than a few minutes to close? Do you have more than one person running your DNS, DHCP and IPAM infrastructure – and do staff have access to a self-service portal? Do you run your IP addressing on a spreadsheet or homegrown solution?

Until now, says Yankee Group's Kerravala, DDI was “a nice-to-have technology, but not a need-to-have” for many network admins. But in the months ahead, he warns, DDI will undergo “its most substantial transformation yet.” Network admins may need all the assistance they can get.