Apologies for the long post. I'm pretty new to this and want to make sure I understand before implementing it. Currently we have an Excel spreadsheet to track our subnets, hosts, and static IP addresses. Ideally we would like to replace this and use IPAM exclusively. However there are a few questions and concerns about how to best set this up. Let me give you some background:
a) SolarWinds already added a number of our subnets based on DHCP servers
b) We have static and DHCP addresses on the same subnet. Typically .30-254 are set aside as DHCP.
c) We want to reserve 001-009 on each subnet for network equipment. We don't do DHCP reservations. At the moment we confirm an IP is available, add the host/description to the IP spreadsheet, assign the IP on the device, and add a DNS entry where appropriate.
d) We have a hostname or description for all assigned static IP's in the Excel file, however many of these are not in DNS (some descriptions are literally just printer make/model)
e) We track external IP's for our ISP equipment
I manually added a subnet and found that it sets all IP addresses to static, rather than using the DHCP scope setting. (I can tell it isn't linked to the DHCP server like the auto-imported ones) My first thought was to set the DHCP addresses as dynamic. Alternatively set our actual static addresses to Reserved, but this SolarWinds doc says these IP's may not be assigned to a network device - http://www.solarwinds.com/NetPerfMon/SolarWinds/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#context=SolarWinds&file=OrionIPAMPHStatus.htm
Based on other comments on Thwack, I believe a device could still use this address, and then it would change from Reserved to Used. However, my understanding is when this device is no longer in use, the IP will go to a Transient state and ultimately return to Available, rather than Reserved like we want. I realize I can adjust the Transient settings, but I assume there is a reason you don't want this completely off.
So at the moment, I am leaning towards keeping the existing subnets with the proper DHCP scope info and manually add what's missing. So my questions are -
1) How can I tell SolarWinds to not assign a specific group of IP addresses (e.g. 001-009) and not use ones in the DHCP scope?
2) How do you track the description for devices that aren't in DNS? Manually add in hostname, node alias, or comment field? Or a custom property?
3) How do you track external IP's for ISP equipment?
