Community
- Command Central
- MVP Program
- Monthly Mission
- Blogs
- Groups
- Events
- Media Vault
Products
- Observability
- Network Management
- Application Management
- IT Security
- IT Service Management
- System Management
- Database Management
Content Exchange
- SolarWinds Platform
- Server & Application Monitor
- Database Performance Analyzer
- Server Configuration Monitor
- Network Performance Monitor
- Network Configuration Manager
- SQL Sentry
- Web Help Desk
Free Tools & Trials

IPAM 1.0 First Impressions

While I was officially in the beta for IPAM, other higher priority tasks took over my time and I couldn't use it as much as I would have liked. I've now downloaded the finished product and installed the eval version on my production server. Here's some comments based upon the first few hours of using IPAM. I should also mention that we are a service provider, so our requirements are somewhat different than the average enterprise using IPAM.

Cannot edit multiple subnets at once. If you want to be able to fill in the custom properties of several subnets at one time or modify several subnets at one time, it does not appear as though this can be done.
No option to not automatically add individual IP addresses to IPAM. As a service provider, we really only want to track subnet assignments, not individual IP addresses in each subnet. If IPAM must add individual IPs, there should be an option to set the status of those IPs upon subnet creation.
No ability to set status on a supernet or subnet. Again, as a service provider, we only care about the status of a particular subnet and not the individual IPs. I'd like to be able to set a subnet to "Used", "Available", "Reserved", or just not have a status assigned at all. I can explain in more detail if necessary.
No option to set custom properties during subnet allocation by using the wizard. You appear to only be able to set Location and VLAN.
No option to set the default column sort order. I'd like to sort by 'Address' automatically, because the description sorts things in alphabetical or numerical order, not in order of actual IP address. Kind of annoying to have to reset this with every new login or new subnet view.
No ability to create "Smart Groups" based on custom properties (like ipMonitor).
No ability to disable ICMP scanning by default like there is with SNMP. Again, as a service provider, I'm not interested in pinging our customer subnets and I'm pretty sure that most of them wouldn't much appreciate it, either!
Need better IPv6 support. However, I understand the challenges with this, as we've had extreme difficulties adding IPv6 into our homegrown solution. ("Umm, bleearg13? Hi, I just crashed the database because I tried to break up a /48 into individual /96 subnets. Is that bad?")

If there is a good way around these limitations, please let me know. Otherwise, I do like IPAM and can see how we might be able to save money by purchasing this as opposed to continuing development on our current homegrown solution.

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

bleearg13

Another one:

No ability to import just subnets. It appears that you can only import IP addresses. This is a big hinderance in importing our existing data.

bleearg13

Couple more:

When creating custom properties, we are not able to create different datatypes. It would be nice to be able to choose a date/time or numerical value.
When using the Subnet Allocation Wizard, it appears to mark the 'subnet zero' (first possible subnet) as allocated. What's the reason for this?

bleearg13

I hope there's no limit to the amount of times you can reply to your own post.

Being able to set SNMP parameters for a specific subnet would be great. I know I said I didn't need to scan networks, but, there are definitely some internal networks that I'd like to scan. Not all my devices have the same SNMP string. If I configure the SNMP string priorities, it tries one and goes on to the next one. The problem is, I have syslog alerts set up to send emails whenever a bad SNMP string is used to query one of our devices and IPAM will trigger these with each scan.

bshopp

#1 - this is a known issue and already logged into our system to address

#2 - How are you adding the subnet? Via the Add Subnet or Subnet Allocation Wizard? If you add via Add Subnet, there is a checkbox to not add IP Addresses on Add Subnet

#3 - I will ping you offline on this, but you can define a custom field on the subnet/supernet level and set status there as text

#4 - Good point out on subnet allocation wizard. This does work on the Add Subnet wizard, you will see the applicable custom fields for a subnet here

#5 - I believe you hit a defect here, we will reach out to you offline

#6 - I will add this to my list to discuss with you further offline about

#7 - Understand your point. In 1.0 we use ICMP in scanning to determine if an IP is used or not. We have on the roadmap to determine this via other methods. Right now on a per subnet basis, you can turn off scanning and manually manage the addresses as well.

#8 - Agree, that is on the roadmap for stronger IPv6 Support

#9 - I have logged this into our system as an enhancement

#10 - This is on the roadmap

#11 - Let me look into and get back to you

bshopp

#12 - I will note this in our internal tracking system

bleearg13

#2 - How are you adding the subnet? Via the Add Subnet or Subnet Allocation Wizard? If you add via Add Subnet, there is a checkbox to not add IP Addresses on Add Subnet

I'm using the Subnet Allocation Wizard. Earlier this evening, I did find this functionality in the Add Subnet Wizard, so this is handy. I'd say, however, that most of our subnets are created in bulk.

bleearg13

#3 - I will ping you offline on this, but you can define a custom field on the subnet/supernet level and set status there as text

I'm aware that we can set custom properties, but not only is this cumbersome and another thing to have to manually type in when adding a subnet, but also there's no good reporting function for it. I know I can create custom reports as well, but the different resources that use the Available/Used/Reserved flags would be pretty much useless, as would the graphing capabilities on the Chart View.