Technology | ITSynergy

ITSynergy Simplifies DNS Management with BlueCat’s Adonis

As a business-to-business IT sales, services and consultancy company, ITSynergy fully understands what it takes to install and manage a highly-efficient IT network. Headquartered in London, England, ITSynergy has made its name working in some of the most demanding sectors of industry, including the Financial Sector (including stockbrokers, funds managers, equity funders and asset finance) and Logistics (including ship owners, managers and operators). Although its primary specialty is the SME marketplace, ITSynergy also works in the enterprise space.

Firmly committed to putting the customer first, ITSynergy was well aware that the performance of its network had a huge impact on the performance of its staff, and the service they provide.

“As parts of our infrastructure reached the end of its lifecycle, we took the opportunity to review our options going forward, and our DNS infrastructure was identified as an early contender for an overhaul,” said Ben Pollitzer, Technical Director, ITSynergy. “Although DNS is a key service, because we were running BIND on *nix/*nux, we were still engaged in the traditional vicious cycle to keep it running – hardware to maintain, operating system and software patches to apply, etc.” Pollitzer continued. “Even though we were using a version control system on BIND files, maintaining accuracy, consistency and technical correctness was proving increasingly difficult.”

In order to update its DNS infrastructure, ITSynergy began researching available solutions.

“We ruled out hosted services, due to cost implications, technical factors and internal policy,” explained Pollitzer. “That left us with stand-alone solutions, and so we began researching available solutions, including BlueCat’s Adonis and Nixu SNS.”

Having completed rigorous research of the available technologies, ITSynergy selected BlueCat’s Adonis as the ideal solution to its DNS problems. Adonis enables an organization to manage both DNS (Domain Name System) and DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) within a single scalable platform that plugs into any IPv4 and/or IPv6 network. With Adonis ITSynergy would be able to harness a comprehensive suite of tools and wizards to securely configure, deploy, and administer IP addresses, configurations, and DNS. It would also be able to shield its DNS against server and protocol attacks like spoofing, ID hacking, and cache poisoning.

”We chose Adonis to replace our mixed *nix/*nux environment running various versions of BIND as it was a well established and well reviewed product that came in an appliance format with cross-platform management tools,” noted Pollitzer. “Our testing confirmed that Adonis would greatly simplify management of the DNS infrastructure, and also future-proof our IPAM investment by making it easy for us to migrate to and manage the much-longer IP addresses that will be utilized once IPv6 replaces IPv4,” Pollitzer continued. “As not even seasoned network engineers will be able to remember a full length IPv6 IP address we knew a reliable and robust DNS layer would end up becoming a fundamental prerequisite to our ability to troubleshoot IPAM and network issues.”

Having thoroughly prepared for the integration of Adonis, ITSynergy was able to work with BlueCat to make light work of the roll out.

“The complete installation and integration process was completed within a week,” said Pollitzer. “BlueCat’s support during the process was excellent, and has continued to be extremely responsive since installation.”

Adonis now provides ITSynergy with extreme confidence in its DNS records. In fact, the technology has proved so successful that ITSynergy is looking to add additional BlueCat’s IP Address Management (IPAM) solution.

“The Adonis management console ensures consistent and technically correct DNS records are always in place and it is now being utilized for the majority of our public DNS infrastructure,” explained Pollitzer. “We are so pleased with Adonis that we are now considering increasing our use of BlueCat’s products to include its IPAM range.”

Adonis has met all ITSynergy’s DNS service requirements from both a technology and cost perspective.

“BlueCat’s technology is a good fit for ITSynergy because it enables us to provide high quality DNS services with minimal management right now, as well as ensuring we can continue to do so when it is time to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6,” concluded Pollitzer. “Adonis has proved cost effective in terms of significantly reducing both management time and licensing fees, and I would not hesitate to recommend BlueCat’s solutions to any organization looking to simplify IP address and DNS management.”