The Men & Mice Suite

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A comprehensive DNS, DHCP and IP address management solution

The Men & Mice Suite is a management software solution built to meet the challenges of DNS, DHCP and IP address management in large computer networks. It provides a sophisticated management layer for the existing DNS and DHCP infrastructure integrated with advanced IP address management capabilities.

Deploying the Men & Mice Suite brings many substantial benefits, such as

Non-intrusive, step-wise deployment.
One of the main strengths of the Men & Mice Suite lies in the way it compliments an already existing DNS and DHCP infrastructure. It comes with robust support for Microsoft's DNS and DHCP servers, and integrates well with Active Directory. The Suite also offers excellent support for *nix/BIND environments and mixed *nix/Microsoft networks.
A clear integrated view.
The Men & Mice Suite effectively merges DNS, DHCP and IP address management data into one unified view. Instead of working with multiple servers and different interfaces, administrators get a clear overview of the whole IP address infrastructure.
Secure and easy task delegation.
Senior administrators can define arbitrary subdivisions of authority over the network directory services. They can delegate authority for simple everyday tasks so that they can be handled professionally by help-desk or local operators.

Our long experience in the industry has taught us that these three benefits result in substantial improvements for daily operations, generating fast return on investment.

Click on the image in order to see how the Men & Mice Suite takes network management to the next level.

Non-intrusive, step-wise deployment

The Men & Mice Suite is designed to work with standard *nix/Microsoft DNS and DHCP servers already in place. It provides a management layer on top of the existing servers, and deploying it doesn't require any fork lift effort or large-scale restructuring of the network. In particular, it doesn't require any new proprietary misson-critical servers or appliances for handling DNS and DHCP. There is plenty of great technology already in use on most networks. What is needed is a tool to manage the existing resources well.

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Deploying the Men & Mice Suite is not an all or nothing affair. The Suite contains four core application modules:

Each module can be licensed independently of the others, but it is generally advantageous and more cost-effective to deploy two or more modules as they complement and support each other. For example, it is possible to begin by deploying the DNS Management Module, add the DHCP Management Module at a later stage, and finally go live with full IP Address Management. These steps can be taken in any order, but the full potential of the Men & Mice Suite is onæly realized when all the modules are working together as one integrated application.

Clear and integrated view of the network infrastructure

Standard server technologies for handling DNS and DHCP are great for their purposes, i.e. for handling core DNS and DHCP services. On the other hand, the standard servers were not desinged to address the management challenges that arise when tens or even hundreds of DNS and DHCP servers are serving the same network infrastructure. In such scenarios network administrators are hard pressed to have an up-to-date and consistent view of the network, particularly of the current IP address assignments, and data registered in DNS and DHCP. The Men & Mice Suite is designed to remedy this situation. It provides an integrated IP Address Management database and effectively provides a unified, updateable view of the information stored on the DNS and DHCP servers.

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Architecturally, the Men & Mice Suite is inspired by the three-tier design approach. A typical three-tier system consists of a user interface layer, a middle layer containing functional logic or business rules, and a data storage and access layer. Deploying the Men & Mice Suite allows the network administrator to think of DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management as a three-tier system.

The database layer

The database consists of a unified view of data existing on individual servers in the organization, namely:

DNS zones and records from all DNS server connected to the system.
DHCP scopes and leases from all DHCP server connected to the system.
Permanent data storage in the Men & Mice Suite where IP address ranges, individual host meta-data, user access control information and other management-related information is stored.

Note that the Men & Mice Suite never stores a master copy of the DNS or DHCP data and always treats the actual DNS and DHCP servers as the authoritative sources of information. The Men & Mice Suite works with and complements the existing servers instead of replacing them.

The middle layer

The middle layer functionality is carried out by the Men & Mice Suite Central server. All management and configuration traffic goes through this layer. The Central server is responsible for authenticating users, relaying traffic, and enforcing the access rules defined by the network administrators. Central communicates with the DNS and DHCP servers on the network, and generally moves data between the two surrounding layers.

The user-interface layer

The Men & Mice Suite offers two main user-interfaces to the network infrastructure:

The Men & Mice Management Console. This is a sophisticated easy-to-use Windows application, primarily designed for senior network administrators. The Management Console provides a clear integrated overview of the whole DNS, DHCP and IP address space. Management tasks include zone management, user management, access control, automation configuration, mass-updates and server management.
The Men & Mice Web Client. The web interface is designed for users who aren't necessarily well versed in DNS or DHCP. It is mainly intended designed for users who have been granted rights to perform well defined tasks, e.g. to add printers or new hosts within a given IP address range or DNS zone boundaries. See below (Easy task delegation) for further details.

Easy task delegation

Standard DNS and DHCP servers don't provide any means of controlling user access at the lower levels. For a particular DNS or DHCP server, a given user can either change all data on the server or none. In large organizations with distributed operations this results in a management dilemma. While it is too risky to grant too many users the privileges to make DNS and DHCP changes, the common practice of assigning all DNS and DHCP management to one central team of administrators leads to inefficient use of costly resource and long lead times.

This is how the Men & Mice Suite resolves this dilemma:

The Men & Mice Suite enables the senior network administrators to define arbitrary subdivision of authority over the network's DNS and DHCP services. For example, it is possible to grant one particular user, or a group of users, the privileges to only work with certain DNS zones and/or DHCP scopes regardless of on which servers they are hosted. Users can also be restricted on the IP-level and their access to the Men & Mice clients can be limited arbitrarily.
The Men & Mice Suite provides a simple "self-service" web based interface which confines the user's activities to his/her defined access rights. The web interface provides a "sandbox" environment, ensuring that user activities don't cause any disruptions for the general setup. Users are only allowed to work with their predefined IP-address space(s) and name space(s) and all input or delete actions are filtered through multitude of error and consistency checks to further eliminate the risk of problems.

Men & Mice

Market leaders in the world of DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management, serving thousands of customers.

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