International Monetary Fund improves DNS and DHCP stability with Micetro

Task and solution

The International Monetary Fund was created in 1945 to help promote the health of the world economy through international monetary cooperation. Headquartered in Washington, DC, it is governed by and accountable to the governments of the 189 countries that make up its global membership. The organization employs nearly 2,700 people from 148 countries.

To manage its DNS infrastructure, the IMF used the standard Windows tools for many years. While the tools provided the basic functionality and manageability needed, they didn’t meet the increasing needs of an ever-growing DNS global infrastructure. Specifically, the IMF desired robust audit features, a common interface for administration of its Windows DNS and DHCP, granular role-based access and the ability to more easily manage split-scope configurations in DHCP.

“The Windows tools worked well for us for a number of years,” says Tom Ferris, Senior IT Officer at the IMF. “But we simply outgrew them. We needed a solution that would meet our requirements today and in the future.”

Once the IMF decided to search for an external solution, they moved quickly, researching and evaluating systems within a few months. In addition to finding a solution that provided central management tools, it was imperative to the IMF team that the solution would work with their existing DNS infrastructure.

Micetro met — and exceeded — the requirements.

“The Windows tools worked well for us for a number of years, But we simply outgrew them. We needed a solution that would meet our requirements today and in the future.”

Tom Ferris – Senior IT Officer

Leverage and compatibility

Micetro allowed the IMF to leverage their infrastructure investments by providing a sophisticated management layer on top of its existing DNS and DHCP servers. Because of its non-intrusive and easy deployment as well as intuitive user interface, Micetro was the logical solution for the IMF.

“There was a huge advantage in finding a solution that complemented the systems we already had in place,” says Ferris. “It wasn’t an option for us to start over or to select a solution that wasn’t intuitive.”

Another significant advantage was the fact that Micetro would enable compatibility between Microsoft and UNIX systems, providing easier administration, less complexity and more efficiency across the IMF’s global teams.

Meeting and exceeding strategies

Sean Marshall, principal network engineer at the IMF, echoes Ferris’ thoughts. “With our prior system, we didn’t have a central Web interface but rather were managing multiple interfaces,” he says. “Now, we support one interface. The process is simply a lot ‘cleaner’ and enables us to operate more efficiently.” Indeed.

Marshall notes that the common interface and role-based access have eased the burden the IMF’s server team once felt since a broader range of people, specifically, the IMF’s network operations team, has access to DNS administration.

The savings are equivalent to one-half of a full-time position.

“Micetro closed the gap and enabled us to pursue our strategies.”

Tom Ferris – Senior IT Officer

Clear and integrated view

Instead of manually administering tens of hundreds of DNS and DHCP servers, with no clear overview of the IP address space, Micetro consolidates critical data in an intuitive interface that provides one logical and unified view of the network infrastructure.

Non-intrusive, stepwise deployment

One key reason the IMF chose Micetro is that they could keep their existing DNS and DHCP servers, Active Directory domain controllers, and their configuration. Micetro adds a management layer on top of them and provides scalable and secure management capabilities.

An important feature lacking in the IMF’s former system was the ability to maintain a chronologically correct audit trail, as well as historical logging of the changes being made. The IMF can be assured that regulatory compliance is met through the logging of all activities in real-time.

Easy and secure task delegation

Micetro allows senior network administrators to define granular and flexible subdivisions of the IP address space and grant specified users and user groups limited privileges to perform well-defined tasks, such as adding a new device to the network. These users get an easy-to-use browser-based “sandbox” interface where they can easily perform their allowed tasks.

When relying solely upon server-native management consoles, for example, a junior administrator would have the ability to delete an entire scope, taking down a significant portion of network services. All access to Windows servers can be lost for hours. With Micetro, however, such errors are simply not possible.

One of the founding cornerstones of the IMF is stability. The IMF needed a stable and secure solution that would meet its needs and strategies today and into the future. With Micetro, the IMF can be confident in its choice.