Agreed, good product, and they have tie-ins to the Registries for filling out and submitting request templates, etc.
-b
Eric,
We recently migrate away from IPPlan to 6connect. There is significant cost to the application but the end result (IMHO) is well worth it.
IPPlan was great that is used MySQL, as many of us use that DB, so integration was easy, but what we were trying to do with the integration on the "backend" with IPPlan, 6connect does out of the box.
DNS integration, RESTful with ARIN, user access control etc. Not trying to sell the product here, just saying that we went through what you are going through and if it helps, I wish we had the time back that we put into IPPlan.
They have hosted and "local" installs available, but they prefer the hosted model. We did local install.
Infoblox just started offering the IPAM portion of their software for free,
http://www.infoblox.com/en/resources/software-downloads/ip-address-management-freeware.html
We've been using the full-blown commercial appliances (IPAM, DHCP, and
DNS), not the freeware. I don't know exactly how it works without the
other pieces integrated, but it may be worth a look.
I actually was doing research on this today as well. Anyone have any experience with the solutions that implement VLAN management as well like Gestioip?
I'm not remotely interested in externally developed software for this
problem. But it's fair question. Generally this tool should not be IP or
VLAN based but generic resource reservation tool, IP, VLAN, RD, RT,
VPLS-ID, site-id, pseudowireID what have you.
For me, humans would not do much directly with the tool. They'd give it
large chunk of resource. Then maybe mine it to pools like 'coreLink',
'coreLoop', 'custLink', 'custLAN' etc.
Then in your provisioning tools, you'd request resource from specific pool
via restful API. Humand would never manually write RD/RT/IP/VLAN in the
tool or in the configs. And this type of system is vastly simpler than the
IPAMs I see listed, once you get rid of all the UI candy, it gets rather
easy problem to solve.
> I actually was doing research on this today as well. Anyone have any
> experience with the solutions that implement VLAN management as well like
> Gestioip?
I'm not remotely interested in externally developed software for this
problem.
what do you mean. i'd be fine with an opensource project providing this.
But it's fair question. Generally this tool should not be IP or
VLAN based but generic resource reservation tool, IP, VLAN, RD, RT,
VPLS-ID, site-id, pseudowireID what have you.For me, humans would not do much directly with the tool. They'd give it
large chunk of resource. Then maybe mine it to pools like 'coreLink',
'coreLoop', 'custLink', 'custLAN' etc.
Then in your provisioning tools, you'd request resource from specific pool
via restful API. Humand would never manually write RD/RT/IP/VLAN in the
tool or in the configs. And this type of system is vastly simpler than the
IPAMs I see listed, once you get rid of all the UI candy, it gets rather
easy problem to solve.
this is a pretty accurate description of our requirements, as well. off the
top of my head we'd also manage phone numbers, key ids, and key box ids, with
it, but that would almost be a minor detail. 
Thilo Bangert (thilo.bangert) writes:
> Then in your provisioning tools, you'd request resource from specific pool
> via restful API. Humand would never manually write RD/RT/IP/VLAN in the
> tool or in the configs. And this type of system is vastly simpler than the
> IPAMs I see listed, once you get rid of all the UI candy, it gets rather
> easy problem to solve.this is a pretty accurate description of our requirements, as well. off the
top of my head we'd also manage phone numbers, key ids, and key box ids, with
it, but that would almost be a minor detail.
I think many of these requirements would be met by Netdot...
Cheers,
Phil
netdot doesn't handle vrfs. This is one of its major drawbacks.
Nick
If exactly what I want exist, of course I'd love to have it. But evaluating
options, working with them until you realise it does not work for you might
take more time to just build it in-house to fit your needs and integrate to
your existing systems.
I have same opinion for NMS also. Everything I see offered is terrible and
do not even solve easy-to-solve problems correctly.
Saku Ytti (saku) writes:
If exactly what I want exist, of course I'd love to have it. But evaluating
options, working with them until you realise it does not work for you might
take more time to just build it in-house to fit your needs and integrate to
your existing systems.
I have same opinion for NMS also. Everything I see offered is terrible and
do not even solve easy-to-solve problems correctly.
Right, that's what's great about Open Source 
Phil
The comment fully applies to system like HP OV or NNM or what is it called
today. It does nothing worth while to you without putting hours and hours
of work into it.
While it's easy to define what every SP wants out of NMS which can be
turn-key, without spamming people with so many alarms that they stop caring
about them.
You can literally start from 0 and in 2h have software to send traps to
IRC/XMPP and get alarms from link up/down, isis up/down, bgp up/down, ldp
up/down, hardware inserted/removed, PSU offline/online etc. Which already
to my demands is superior I can get out of any system in 2h I've looked
into.
This tool handle most of what you are asking for:
hard to configure though. When it gets to the stage that it's relatively
easy to configure and has good quality documentation, it will be awesome.
Nick
[snip]>
For me, humans would not do much directly with the tool. They'd give it
large chunk of resource. Then maybe mine it to pools like 'coreLink',
'coreLoop', 'custLink', 'custLAN' etc.
Then in your provisioning tools, you'd request resource from specific pool
via restful API. Humand would never manually write RD/RT/IP/VLAN in the
[snip]
A CMDB that tracks configuration items. An IP address is just one
kind of CI out of thousands. A good CMDBs should ideally provide
efficient management, visualization, and reporting for all kinds of
CIs
Software that tracks such things should understand the internal
structure of every kind of CI it tracks, and be able to easily answer
simple questions, (eg. Which VLAN ID is assigned to the subnet that
IP address Y belongs to. If IP Address Y is part of a
static NAT configuration, on a LAN router, what external IP address
and external VLAN Id is this IP associated with?).
But is there a decently scalable open source application for building
a CMDB, that is visually appealing and efficient for humans to use,
without a ton of manual development; other than custom building
applications and SQL schema by hand, for each kind of CI?
I am not aware of one....
...
But is there a decently scalable open source application for building
a CMDB, that is visually appealing and efficient for humans to use,
without a ton of manual development; other than custom building
applications and SQL schema by hand, for each kind of CI?I am not aware of one....
I have not seen one, and I've been at places that have spent man-years
building custom apps and SQL schema by hand in the lack of an
available open source tool.
Zenoss works very well as a cmdb.
Zenoss is very visually appealing, but a monitoring system for network
hosts, not a CMDB.
In particular, except through extensive custom programming, I see no
mechanism to manage CIs with it or query for facts...
Zenoss doesn't seem to have any way you can represent or, query, or
model a fact that a certain IP address terminates in Vlan X, on
device Y, with default gateway IP G that has NSAP ID H, and device Y
lives in building A room 1 aisle 2 rack 4 rack slot number 5,
fed by breakers 186 and 237, with upstream Ethernet cable ID #G296R
plugged into port 39 on patch panel 2, which lands on Switch K
port Gig8/44.
Networks have many "items of importance" that are not hosts, also,
and are not readily modelled using SNMP.
Much less the application layer, physical SW installs or logical groupings layer, or a virtual hosts or internal cloud stack layer. Or tie ins to the release management or DevOps control layer.
I know this is NANOG, but configuration control runs a ways up the stack... A proper CMDB will have to be able to take a much bigger picture.
Not to slight Zenoss; it's good at what it does do. But that's not a CMDB.
That is not to suggest that products that handle a limited slice of the stack in a more organized manner are not valuable. Every little bit helps, in the current absence of a delivered off-the-shelf comprehensive product.
But if you've ever watched a comprehensive product run, partnered with a systems deploy tool with all the business logic on physical anti-affinity for power, rack, network layers, ... Provisioning a 1000+ node, 60+ server types app environment into a data center with one command line, selected, booted, network side VLANs allocated and configured, apps installed, apps configured, and ready for traffic...
The data to be able to pull that off can be gathered and can be managed and used effectively. That's the power of a real, comprehensive CMDB.
George William Herbert