What DOD’s JEDI Cloud Contract Means for Your DNS

Now that Microsoft has won the big DOD JEDI cloud contract, we’re looking ahead to the migration process and the challenges DOD agencies are likely to face as they try to move into a hybrid environment.

A lack of visibility becomes very noticeable

Visibility plays a very important role in DNS. Most network administrators want “a single pane of glass”, where they can get a sense of what’s going on with their DNS quickly and easily. This is especially important when network resources are stretched between on-prem and cloud environments, where trying to keep track of resources can quickly become complicated, leaving blind spots.

What do we mean by blind spots? With decentralized DNS management systems, there is no single point of truth for resource management across the enterprise. Administrators use spreadsheets, sticky notes, or other manual processes to keep track of assets – overall, this can become very disorganized and frustrating. These problems can be avoided by working under one Adaptive DNS architecture.  

You discover how much control over your network you have

In this case, having the ability to see your DNS resources goes hand in hand with having the ability to control them. Issues can arise when, for example, compute is deployed without getting the go-ahead from the system administrator or someone in a similar role (this is also known as shadow IT). This can go unnoticed for quite some time, and security may be compromised by these new, unmonitored entryways. However, if the system is visible with BlueCat’s Adaptive DNS, east-west traffic can quickly be seen and subsequently dealt with.

If your DNS is migrated to the JEDI cloud without the proper controls in place, you can run into unpleasant infrastructure management issues. It’s much simpler (and will save you plenty of trouble in the long run) if you have control over your network before a migration, so a centralized DNS is key here as well. A good general doesn’t just let their troops fly off to battle before ensuring communications and commands are in place, right?