BlueCat DNS and DHCP Server for AWS

I work as a SOC for DDI . I have been working in this domain for the last nine years, and my total experience is 12 years. I have been using BlueCat Integrity  to host our DDI  services for one of our elite customers in the aviation industry. We use BlueCat Integrity  to manage internal domains, domain records, and their zones, and we are managing their DHCP scopes for more than 170 sites. We used BlueCat Integrity over Infoblox solution to migrate all the services from Infoblox's legacy solution to BlueCat Integrity.

BlueCat Integrity is a straightforward tool that supports all the basic requirements to host DDI services. One of the best features is its ability to have at least three BAM  servers in a redundancy failover setup, which really helped to make the BAM  highly resilient. In case two of your main sites go down, it can failover to the third site, which is very effective in case of a disaster recovery. Overall, BlueCat support is also good. We received relevant support from the BlueCat product team for whatever issues we faced during the implementation of the product, and it was up to the mark.

BlueCat Integrity supports automation via REST API, with which we were able to automate the standard DNS workflow request by using Python scripts in which API V2 version was very helpful. They have a built-in Swagger portal which helps to simulate API calls, and using that, it was pretty easy to design the framework and the code to implement DNS automation.

BlueCat Integrity has really brought a positive impact on the new environment because the ease of implementation and the support from the product team was very good. We were able to implement BlueCat Integrity with their other different products including BlueCat Gateway  solution, with which we were able to put different uses of DNS in different categories.

BlueCat Integrity overall is a very mature product. However, the console and the web interface do require built-in features which they have improved in their 25.0 version.

They need an improvement in out-of-the-box features wherein they can enable the backup feature to be taken from the GUI itself. The documentation also lacks in the basics of providing what needs to be configured while implementing that solution.

BlueCat Integrity does not offer all the features out of the box, and the customization with BlueCat is very limited. One has to be very clear with their requirements in terms of what they want to achieve in the target design before making a purchase decision.

Overall, this is a good tool, though it needs a lot of improvement in terms of customization and helping customers to effectively deploy the environment according to their requirements. They need to pick up on the areas where other OEMs are pretty good, such as having Kea-based DHCP engine.

I have been using BlueCat Integrity for the past three years.

BlueCat Integrity is stable.

In terms of scalability, we can deploy the servers on demand, and if we have the virtual infrastructure up and ready, we can scale without a need for licensing because our current business licensing model is not on the basis of the number of handles.

BlueCat customer support is really friendly. We have a weekly call set up with BlueCat support team wherein they address all the open issues in our environment. In case we need immediate support with any issue, they engage the engineering team and try to resolve it as soon as possible.

Customer support is good. As we are on the platinum services support model, we get a turnaround time to attend to any issues.

Previously, we used Infoblox NIOS  solution. The reason for switching from Infoblox to BlueCat was the business split in the customer environment. Infoblox was a legacy solution and was retained by a different business. BlueCat was the new OEM used in the new business setup.

The process for migration from Infoblox to BlueCat Integrity was easy and yet complicated because we had BlueCat support and professional support, but we did all the migration during specific change timelines. We used to open each site which hosts a local DHCP and DNS solution. We migrated on a site-by-site basis. It was a pretty streamlined process because there was a transition team who did a discovery for the entire site and informed us about how many scopes and what domains are in use for that site. We staged all the required DHCP scopes, IP addresses, and DNS domains along with the records before the migration window, and on the day of the migration window, we only needed to update the DHCP helper address. Once the traffic came to the new DHCP server, the new DHCP server gave the new DNS server information, which cut over the entire traffic for that site.

There were many times where we had a requirement to import bulk configuration to take over the sites from the legacy environment to the new environment. We used to reach out to the professional services team with raw data in the desired format, which they would digest, and within a couple of days, we would get the XML file which BlueCat migration engine supports. We would import that file and make the environment stage before the big migration day. We got help from the BlueCat support team in this way. There were many times we reported bugs in the product, which they were able to identify with the help of their engineering team and they opened the product enhancement feature or were able to provide the fix for that issue in the next hotfix.

We did see a return on investment as we only have a team of six who are managing BlueCat Integrity infrastructure 24/7, and with the help of automation, we were able to reduce the headcount as we automated most of the requests using BlueCat Integrity API.

I was not a part of pricing, setup cost, and licensing as it was done by the customer itself.

We did see a cost reduction in overall infrastructure as BlueCat Integrity offered services at much more effective rates compared to other OEMs.

We did evaluate different products including EfficientIP and Infoblox.

We are using BlueCat Integrity's robust APIs to automate our DNS standard changes for adding DNS records including A records, CNAME records, and PTR records. We are also using APIs to automate the IP allocation and DHCP requests.

We are not using BlueCat Integrity's intelligent NetOps capability in our environment.

BlueCat Integrity performed a very good job in meeting the hybrid environment requirements and met my expectations. I would rate this review as a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for BlueCat Integrity  is managing IP addresses and managing DNS, which was the primary focus for using BlueCat.

I actually used BlueCat Integrity  for several different projects where we had to create a new DNS name for the website and also to add an IP address for that site, which was the main case. From there, we were creating new IP addresses, adding or matching DNS names, and that was the extent of my usage.

In my opinion, the best features BlueCat Integrity offers are automation. However, I wouldn't say the user interface is friendly—it's very complex, and I found myself stuck a couple of times finding some features that I wanted to find, even very simple features. So I wouldn't say it's user-friendly, but definitely automation, reporting, and integration are very fast and convenient to set up. The interface should be more intuitive and more user-friendly.

The features are fine, as I mentioned before. Just the interface itself has to be improved, and that's my opinion.

BlueCat Integrity has definitely impacted our organization positively by improving visibility. I wouldn't say it reduced errors, as we had a colleague who unfortunately didn't know BlueCat well and made a couple of mistakes that actually brought the site down for Loyalty One. We had to find a workaround and fix it. Visibility I would say improved, but because of the main issue that BlueCat has—which is the user-unfriendly interface—it made my coworker make a huge mistake. Other than that, everything else is fine.

Improved visibility has helped my team track resources more easily, which I would say is very good and very helpful.

BlueCat's approach to customer relationships has definitely influenced my experience with their services positively, as communication was better, and we had everything in place. We used only one service instead of five or six different tools, making it easier because integration covers everything in BlueCat. This definitely improved our efficiency and communication between teams, as many teams were involved in servicing and administering BlueCat, so it was much easier for us to complete one part of the work and then let the other teams continue.

I would say BlueCat Integrity can be improved by enhancing the web interface itself. Some parts could be more intuitive and maybe packed in one place instead of being scattered around.

The needed improvements cover just the web interface, which I would definitely improve, as everything's a little scattered around. Perhaps the different features can be consolidated in one place.

I have been working in my current field for the last three to three and a half years.

BlueCat Integrity was stable.

The scalability of BlueCat Integrity was fine. I liked it—it was very effective and scales up as much as needed, whatever the case may be. I would say from one to ten, it's an eight or a nine.

My experience with customer support was very good. We had not major issues, only minor ones working with BlueCat and their support team. We had premium support, obviously at additional cost, but they were very responsive and helpful with various cases we had. I would rate customer support an eight or nine for sure as that was the good part about BlueCat.

I would rate customer support an overall nine.

I haven't evaluated other options before choosing BlueCat Integrity, as BlueCat was already established in our company, and they never switched to anything else. I'm not sure about other options before BlueCat as there might have been some, but I know that they chose BlueCat probably because of its features. Although the user interface isn't as friendly, it's still great because instead of using five tools, you have one.

There was a return on investment. I'm not sure about the money saved, but probably the consolidation of five different tools into one BlueCat solution did provide savings. I wasn't sure about time saved, as a lot of people struggled with the user interface, which was a missing point when using BlueCat. Many people were involved in using BlueCat, so I wouldn't say there were fewer employees needed—maybe more employees were needed than fewer.

I couldn't say much about BlueCat's licensing model as I wasn't the main person or a decision-maker on how the license should be applied and how much budget should be allocated. I think the product itself is not that expensive, and it is very useful, and the renewal process is very easy. I wouldn't say it's expensive, and it helped a lot to comply and to have all the things, especially with the DNS and IP addresses, finished in no time.

I can't tell you much about pricing, setup cost, and licensing as I was the end user of BlueCat. I heard that it wasn't that expensive, and what BlueCat offered for the price was very worthwhile.

My advice for others looking into using BlueCat Integrity is that it is definitely a good product and worth the money. It has a lot of good features, probably improved features since I used BlueCat. Everything is combined in one tool, which is great. However, it's not easy to use, and as I mentioned before, it requires some improvements. Overall, it's a very good product. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

BlueCat Integrity  is one of my main roles here, and we use it a lot. We use BlueCat Integrity  as our main DDI  function. DDI  stands for DHCP, DNS and IPAM, and we use the full functionality that BlueCat Integrity provides to us.

For example, regarding DNS, which is the most important functionality of the DDI, we depend on other products, even if they are BlueCat products, to provide us with categorization of external DNS.

In our company right now, we have more than 1,000 domains and we have a couple thousand networks. We are a company that has more than 300 locations and around 100,000 employees. With one person, it is not sufficient for our needs. However, it depends on the size of the company. If the company is a little bit smaller, one person for sure can take care of it. In my specific case, a team is necessary because of the scale and how large we are.

BlueCat Integrity is a very mature and reliable product, and we really love it. BlueCat has other products that we use as well, but this one is the base. If this one is not working well, it would not be a good product, and we would not even be using the other ones. We can say it is extremely mature and reliable, and these are the things that I like the most about it.

BlueCat Integrity provides a single pane of glass view of our IP address space for us, for sure. That is true.

It is extremely important. Otherwise, it would not be something that we would be using. For example, as I mentioned, BlueCat has even other additional products, and one of the things that we request them all the time is to integrate these other products in the single pane of glass, even though if it is not the core of DDI. This is pretty good, what they are doing, and they are improving and evolving it a lot, which is something we appreciate.

I would say yes, BlueCat Integrity has helped me to reduce human error in practice. The interface is pretty good and it has some automatic verifications that can be done.

Regarding what I dislike about BlueCat Integrity, they have improved the interface right now. It is more modern, and we are even using the new version. All the automation is good. I believe they could add more security features embedded in the product. Security features would be something that I would suggest.

For example, regarding DNS, which is the most important functionality of the DDI, BlueCat Integrity could suggest specific hardening on the DNS configuration when we are talking about the DNS records themselves. One thing I would love is whenever I configure a domain that is externally exposed, BlueCat Integrity could provide additional security guidance.

I specifically started to use BlueCat Integrity when I joined CGI around eight years ago. However, CGI has had it for longer than eight years.

The stability of BlueCat Integrity is pretty good. I do not recall the last time we had a very important incident with DNS. It is really pretty stable. This comes to the thing that I mentioned in the beginning. BlueCat Integrity is a platform that is mature and that we can trust.

Regarding scalability, our solution has so many servers and so much redundancy, and we did not even get into a point where we needed to add more servers because of load. We are pretty overprovisioned. If you need to add additional devices and if you know how to do it and if you need to increase your size, it is easy if you know what you are doing. The scalability of the product is pretty good. It is easy to replicate, create new sites, and expand the system.

I have contacted the technical support or customer support every week. I believe that we have the premium support regarding the quality and the speed. The support is excellent. We have a good relationship with them. When you have an issue, you know that the issue is not only yours, but theirs as well. The way I am talking to you reflects that I really appreciate this vendor. It is easy to work with them. Until now, I would give the support a score of 10. They have been doing a very good job.

I did not use a commercial product previously. I only used freeware tools. For example, the DNS server which is BIND. BlueCat Integrity actually relies on BIND as well. What BlueCat Integrity does is provide orchestration and management, a layer above BIND that helps us a lot with the management of everything. I have never used a product that was comparable. I used a little bit of SolarWinds, but I would not be so prepared to compare both. There are other IPAM solutions in the market. However, with the extent of BlueCat Integrity usage that I have as well as the experience, it is difficult for me to compare with the other ones because I used them briefly.

The initial deployment of BlueCat Integrity is easy. It is pretty good.

One person can do the deployment, but it really depends on the size of your company or the size of your installation. In our company right now, we have more than 1,000 domains and we have a couple thousand networks. We are a company that has more than 300 locations and around 100,000 employees. With one person, it is not sufficient for our needs. However, it depends on the size of the company. If the company is a little bit smaller, one person for sure can take care of it. In my specific case, a team is necessary because of the scale and because of how large we are.

If you ask me this question in six months regarding the pricing of BlueCat Integrity, I probably will have a better idea because it is a renewal time. I can tell you it is expensive or cheap, but I do not know what the market is charging for this product specifically. I am a technical person, not from procurement. Perhaps we are paying a price that is a lot for what the market is requesting for this kind of solution, or perhaps it is not a lot. The price I would like to pay does not necessarily mean that the price that the market has for this kind of solution. According to what I know, it is a fair price. However, I cannot tell you a lot more than that.

BlueCat Integrity's automation capabilities are pretty good, and we have been using it a lot. I would rate this review a 10.

Predominantly, my use cases for BlueCat Integrity  include DDI , DHCP, and DNS services within our organization.

I like most about it that it is centralized, and that is the key point. Being able to understand the overall health and configuration of your environment from a single pane of glass is invaluable. Prior to this, I was running predominantly Microsoft-based services, which require you to log into individual devices or servers one at a time. BlueCat Integrity  solves that problem tremendously for me. Within this enterprise, I have over 150 of these devices running around that I do not have to log into individually. I log into one location and centrally manage them all.

Centralized management is the number one and most critical advantage. Individually managing Microsoft DHCP or DNS servers is always not fun, but centralized management is a huge advantage for any grid-style DNS environments or DHCP environments. Between BlueCat Integrity and Infoblox, these are competitive products that compete against the Microsoft free tools. They are not free, but if you license them, I think you understand what I am saying. Compared to Microsoft, Microsoft is great for smaller environments. When you get into larger environments, it just becomes unmanageable. BlueCat Integrity really shines in that space.

They are killing it for us. It has been working so well and so nicely since we re-architected a few years ago. That was probably when I did my first PeerSpot  review, as BlueCat Integrity picked up a bad reputation. It was not really BlueCat Integrity's fault. It was due to internal decision-making to try to figure things out on our own. We could not figure things out, so that is when I got involved and said, 'Let us get BlueCat Integrity in the arena.' We re-architected, redesigned, redeployed, and things have gone from zeros to heroes because of that.

There is not much to dislike about it. It is not a Microsoft product. It is based on Linux. I am a Microsoft guy learning to run these Linux environments. So there is a little bit of a learning curve there if you are not already a native or natural Linux user.

We do have to patch our environments, probably quarterly, with hot fixes or updates that we have to apply. Updates and maintenance and applying them could be improved. Unfortunately, we can only do them one at a time. We have to follow them sequentially. We cannot do them all in mass. That does become a problem for us, especially if we have a zero-day threat that is sitting out there that is live. If I cannot update my environment within moments, then I am challenged. In order to update this environment with 150 plus devices, I have to go through one at a time. That can take us several days to be able to patch.

Our API is the only automation capability. Our networking team who provisions our new networks as we build a new environment or a new site or we acquire a new organization handles a lot of that through automation via API. They provision and build up the permissions and rights and access model for each new network and sub-network. We are considering and trying to determine if we need to get even more automated and whether or not we need to leverage more API capability. We are building a team of automation engineers, and they are looking around and digging to find something to work on. We could do some more automation, but what would we do? We still have not figured out what else we would do.

For my team that runs the actual BlueCat Integrity environment, we do not use API automation. Our networking team who provisions and builds the new networks handles that via API. We have thought about going through more in-depth automation, but we cannot find a good use case for it in terms of what level of engagement we want to take with it and how dedicated we want to be to become a development shop. That is still on the wings and we are trying to figure out if this is something that we can handle, or do we continually have to rely upon an external developer. BlueCat Integrity does not develop for us. They have a certain level of liability that they will not accept when it comes to automation and scripting through their API. They say they will guide us, but they will not do it for us.

I have been literally using it for just about 10 years.

Every day, we rely on BlueCat Integrity. That was largely due to the fact that about two or three years ago, the failure rate in our self-made design was terrible. We were dropping hospitals all across the country, at least five a week, with upwards of 30 hospitals per month being impacted due to poor design choices. With the assistance of BlueCat Integrity and re-architecting, redesigning, and redeploying, our failure rate has gone to zero. Dropping 30 hospitals a month, where each hospital is hundreds of beds with thousands of employees, taking them offline is not a good thing. Since we have done our redeployment after last January when we finished, we have enjoyed a complete redeployment and for the last 15 or 16 months, we have had zero failure in the same manner that we were having 30 per month before.

If you do not design and deploy correctly, you can have lots of instability. Following proper design and good manufacturer's best practice recommendations, stability has been exceptional.

Scalability is great as well. We could just plug as many devices as we want into the environment and continue to grow it. Currently, we are at over 150 BlueCat Integrity devices, running at least 70 primary mainstream hospitals and over 1,200 clinical locations. Scalability is great.

It was very easy with guided assistance from BlueCat Integrity teams. The key reason why it made it so much easier for us is that we opted for a premium level of support. We did have to upgrade our support level to really get BlueCat Integrity to participate and help us redesign. That is not their fault. That was us choosing to be cheap the first time around by not purchasing an appropriate level service contract. Once we got that, those guys were really champs and helped us through it.

It is all a matter of which support tier you subscribe to. We have opted for the premium tier here now. That affords us a dedicated team lead that we talk to on a monthly basis. He reviews our conditions. We have come to know each other by first names. He knows our environment, and we know how they operate. At that tier, when you are willing to pay for it, their support level is impeccable. If you go with free or basic support, then you are at the mercy of just about any other support organization, getting the random luck of the draw on which engineer picks up the phone and you have to educate them on what your system is or what your environment is. Having a dedicated support team and a dedicated Customer Success Manager has been immensely helpful for us.

I think the pricing is extremely fair, and if you go to other grid-based services and other competitors in this space, there are not many that I know of. Infoblox is the big one. I am in the middle of assessing and understanding Infoblox's pricing models, but I already know that they are three times what I am paying for BlueCat Integrity.

Centralized management is the biggest selling point that BlueCat Integrity has got. That is the main reason I appreciate the product. All day, every day, I believe this is true. Left to humans, we will screw it up. Some of our automations that are there for provisioning are working great. Now we are trying to figure out how we grow and become a little bit more mature in our space, and we have got an automation team actively investigating ways to improve our scenario.

Large grid style DDI implementations aren't for everyone. If you're in a smaller organization, where you might only have a handful of devices, you may not be able to justify costs of running a DDI solution. The value really starts to grow when you have dozens or hundreds of devices that need management. A single pane of glass and single point of administration is invaluable to enterprises. Instead of having to uniquely administer individual DNS or DHCP servers, you can do it almost 100% from a single Bluecat Address Manager interface. But, if you are an enterprise, you can expect to centralize and reduce your efforts. Our Bluecat SME can just about handle the entire operation himself with about 1/3 of his time dedicated to Bluecat. His other time is available for other support/engineering needs. We do have a few folks trained up though, to eliminate a single point of failure in our personnel.

I love a lot about it. Is it perfect? No, there is still some opportunity. If I had to give an overall score, I would give it a nine.