DNS - Ireland University's DNS Managed by Infoblox

The National University of Ireland, Galway, a research institution, hosts more than 80 websites and domains. The university is home to two Science Foundation Ireland-funded Centers for Science, Engineering and Technology and the Regenerative Medicine Institute, as well as DERI, a research institute of Internet technology.

Finding that the IT staff found it very difficult and complex to maintain the servers and also to take care of the frequent updates and patches that were required, Ron Owens, principal technical specialist of the National University of Ireland, Galway, began using InfoBlox appliances to manage the university’s internal and external DNS and the dynamic host configuration protocol.

Due to Infoblox’s (News - Alert) central management, reliability, easy deployment and administrative advantages, the university purchased nine Infoblox appliances. After evaluating several vendors, the university found that Infoblox was the best and most reliable solution.

Even on the security front, the university found it was beneficial to use Infoblox appliances as it prevented the legacy systems from being open to attack. The IT staff found that there was high availability, continuous uptime, reduced administrative overheads and costs and increased visibility.

In a press release, Owens said, “Moving to Infoblox appliances has provided visibility, resiliency and control while reducing error related risk and time-consuming manual tasks.” 

Installation, maintenance and continued servicing of the appliances was all carried out by Infoblox's U.K. reseller Khipu Networks Limited, whose core business is to provide secure and dynamic network solutions into public sector and corporate organizations.

The first phase of the implementation took place with the deployment of two Infoblox-1050 appliances. This enabled SMEs and branch-office applications to be deployed as standalone units or in high-availability pairs.

In Phase two, there was a major extension of Infoblox systems and two more Infoblox-1050s for primary and secondary internal DNS, two Infoblox-550s for external authoritative DNS, as well as an additional two Infoblox-550s to be used as caching forwarders. Once they were linked together, they became a unified system with inherent resiliency and visibility benefits with Infoblox Grid technology.

As a result, the university now has reliable, manageable and secure network infrastructure services with DR advantages for their education environment. Infoblox appliances ensure continuous uptime, help staff focus on other critical projects, increase security, and reduce administrative overhead and costs.

Owens spoke about the success of the project: “The reliability and security of our network infrastructure services solution is essential for the day-to-day operations at the university. A long-term and well-established relationship with Khipu, Infoblox and NUIG has made this project a great success.”

Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., Infoblox is an industry leader of network infrastructure control solutions. Infoblox solutions are used by over 4,500 organizations worldwide, including more than one third of the Fortune 500.

Underscoring its commitment to the integrity of its products and solutions for helping companies assess compliance, Infoblox joined the PCI (News - Alert) Security Standards Council as a new Participating Organization.