Infoblox > Case Studies > Universite de Montreal Enhances Network Services with Infoblox DDI Solution

Universite de Montreal Enhances Network Services with Infoblox DDI Solution

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

Canada

Product

Infoblox-1050
Infoblox-550
Infoblox Grid™
NS1

Tech Stack

Infoblox Grid™ technology
NS1

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Remote Asset Management

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

Universite de Montreal is a public francophone research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university is Quebec’s largest research institution and the second largest in Canada, allocating close to $447.2 million to research conducted in more than 150 research centers as of 2007. There are more than 55,000 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs. The university is known for its extensive research activities and is a significant contributor to the academic and scientific community in Canada. It offers a wide range of programs and is committed to providing high-quality education and research opportunities to its students.

The Challenge

To deliver essential DNS services, the university had multiple UNIX platforms throughout the campus that had different OS and open source software versions for delivering DNS and DHCP. Universite de Montreal had developed an in-house IPAM solution which was very complex and hard to manage. Because it was based on open source, it proved difficult to maintain, as the IT team had to edit multiple files on different systems without any sophisticated automation system. The monitoring of DNS and DHCP was difficult as the IT team often faced a lack of addresses in the DHCP pool. And, managing the authentication to the system by using the university’s centralized LDAP was a factor, so being able to delegate zone and subzones to local managers was also very important. Finally, the university was in the process of migrating from a public based IP address domain to a secure and private Class A. Michel L’Heureux, Director of Telecommunications at Universite de Montreal came to the decision that their homegrown solution was compromising network availability and becoming increasingly difficult to administer; it was time to look for another solution.

The Solution

In L’Heureux’s quest to find a better solution for the university, he and his team found Infoblox, BlueCat, and a few other vendors in an Internet query. During the evaluation process, Infoblox revealed itself as the best choice for providing the university with the essential network infrastructure automation and control they needed. The university selected Infoblox-1050 appliances running NS1 and unique Infoblox Grid™ technology. The Infoblox Grid technology links a collection of appliances into a unified, centrally-managed platform. Benefits include resilient operations, unified management and real-time, secure, system-wide updates. They also selected Infoblox-550 appliances to address all its DNS, DHCP and IPAM needs throughout their campus environment. The central management, easy updates/patching and “one-button” disaster recovery capability alleviated months of work, condensing it into mere hours.

Operational Impact

The Infoblox solution was easy to deploy and simple to upgrade because it eliminates the need to install and manage an operating system and offers an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, DNS and DHCP services can be easily managed by a purpose-built, HA appliance that is inherently secure, reliable and scalable, freeing network administration resources and providing increased security and reliability for these critical network services.
While evaluating each vendor, L’Heureux and his team also found Infoblox more flexible. “The simplicity of deploying a new version of NIOS is amazing and because of HA, there is no downtime during upgrades and every configuration is synchronized automatically,” said L’Heureux. “Additionally, the amount of flexibility for management of the backend data was easier with Infoblox while migrating DNS and DHCP was dramatically easier. Having a solution that conforms DNS and DHCP RFC’s and offering real DHCP redundancy was a bonus. We found the Infoblox appliance solution fit better with our organizational and workflow models and we can rely on a strong and responsive support team from Infoblox,” commented L’Heureux.
Managing the change in the environment is now very easy to do. DNS and DHCP requests can be treated faster and without error. Managing the university’s IP addresses also has simplified tremendously. They no longer manually assign IP address and keep track in spreadsheets. “We have better control over those services and, the Infoblox appliances will allow us to scale above expectation,” concluded L’Heureux.

Quantitative Benefit