Do not allow IPAM to overwrite the Comments field when an IP address becomes available

esincic

At this time, IPAM wipes out whatever it is filled as comments when subnet scan is performed so we cannot use IPAM to document or include additional information about an IP address.

Without this feature, that means we need to use external documentation either for present or historical information. This makes IPAM less interesting for IP Adress Management.

So, we do ask you to consider this request to be implemented in IPAM.

Thank you.

mgaciarz

I agree wholeheartedly.

I trialed IPAM quite a while ago and ran into this issue.  Trying it again now in hopes that this was either changed or I missed something last time but it doesn't look like it 

Like OP, I was hoping/assuming that this IPAM solution would let us move away from "external documentation" (OMG so many spreadsheets) but, sadly, this doesn't look possible.

Use cases for storing info on available IPs:

• Scenario:  You assign IPs to devices that will be deployed but aren't yet.  In this case, you want to keep that info with the IPs so they don't get reused for other equipment in the meantime
  • Current workaround that's been proposed: set these IPs to Reserved.
    • Downsides: (1) this is an extra step; (2) Reserved now has 3 meanings; (3) This enables unwanted DHCP reservation - related functionality for those IPs in IPAM

• Scenario:  Devices for which we have assigned IPs go offline for periods of time.  This happens in our scenario fairly often, due to user activity, seasonal changes etc.  In some cases, devices can be offline for months at a time but we still need to track those IPs as being "assigned" so we don't reuse them and shoot ourselves in the foot.
  • Current workaround that's been proposed:  Increase the Transient timeout to a very long time or Unlimited.
    • Downsides:  (1) We really would like our IPAM tool to show us which IPs are truly transient (i.e. change within days) vs. ones that don't and this takes away that ability; (2) Transient now has 2 meanings

Even if we could only save Custom Properties for Available IPs, that would still be better than the current situation.

Based on this, It sounds like some of the reservations (get it?) with keeping info on Available IPs were around licensing.  While that seems a little silly, perhaps a workaround would be to create another status like Assigned.  I could see Static IPs automatically transitioning to the Assigned state after going through a Transient transition period.

But I don't think that's something everyone would want so it would probably be simpler to just allow for storing data on Available IPs.