By Sharon Abraham
In today’s complex IT infrastructures, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers play an indispensable role in automating IP allocation and configuration. A DHCP server’s capacity to allocate IPs to the requesting clients in real-time is one of the factors that ensures constant uptime of dynamic networks.
However, even though a network’s availability depends on them, DHCP servers are often not closely monitored by IT teams. This can cause daunting resource outage issues, leading to a costly network downtime. To avoid running into these issues, it is crucial for you to monitor availability metrics of DHCP servers, such as their scopes and IP pools.
While it is possible to monitor availability metrics using several standalone tools, a solution with an integrated IP address manager that can monitor all these metrics is most efficient. This integrated approach enables effective troubleshooting of network issues by correlating the real-time IP status in the network with the data tracked by DHCP servers.
Eliminating the need to switch between tools enables you to mange IP addresses, monitor scopes, view lists of leased IPs, reserve IPs, and generate usage reports — all from a single console.
OpUtils’ enhanced DHCP server monitoring
OpUtils’ DHCP server monitoring capability doesn’t just give you insights into aspects of your DHCP server, but also enhances the process with its advanced IP address management capabilities. This enables you to receive a clear overview of your IP address utilization with insights into DHCP-specific metrics such as IPs leased per scope and available IP addresses.
With networks becoming increasingly dynamic, managing IP addresses in tandem with DHCP IP pool monitoring enables you to plan ahead and avert network hiccups such as IP outages.
How does OpUtils’ DHCP server monitoring help your network?
Monitor the DHCP scope and its IP pool status in real time from one place
Many of today’s networks support several advanced features like dynamic IP allocation and bring your own device policies. With several devices joining and leaving your network continually, you need to keep a close eye on IP availability and DHCP scopes to ensure every requesting device is assigned an IP to connect with your network. Organizational networks may span across multiple DHCP servers. This makes manually cross checking IP utilization data from every DHCP server with the actual data in your network impractical.
OpUtils’ integrated approach to managing DHCP servers as a part of IP address management bypasses the above hurdle altogether. View an IP’s associated MAC address, its availability status, associated DNS, and reservation in the DHCP IP pool. Network admins can now cross-check data from their DHCP server and scope while OpUtils’ IP Address Manager manages the utilization and statuses of their IP addresses.
Instant alerting and effective troubleshooting
Staying in the know of network events enables you to quickly diagnose and troubleshoot network issues with ease. Real-time alerting helps in proactively monitoring your DHCP servers and its IP addresses. OpUtils’ threshold-based alerts ensure that you stay ahead of network mishaps by escalating any emerging issues directly to your email and syslog files.
With OpUtils, the integration of DHCP server monitoring with IP address management speeds up the diagnosis process and ensures effective troubleshooting. For instance, if your DHCP server is running low on available IP addresses, you can identify the IPs that are transient by correlating the DHCP server’s IP pool data in the IP address manager. These IPs can then be made available, averting a possible IP resource outage.
Track usage and plan ahead effectively with granular reports
As networks grow continually, it’s important to effectively plan ahead for your capacity requirements to ensure constant availability of your network. Tracking your DHCP server’s IP allocation helps you identify the IP usage pattern over time.
OpUtils’ diverse reporting options help you analyze different aspects of your network resource’s usage and availability metrics. With its granular reports on monitored DHCP servers, you can track your DHCP server’s scope and IP pool metrics such as IP leases and IP availability. You can configure reports to be scheduled and sent directly to your email or export them as PDF or CSV files. OpUtils’ diverse set of granular reports helps you conduct effective network audits and enhance your capacity planning process.
Supports a wide range of DHCP servers
IT admins are deploying a variety of DHCP servers that can suit their specific network requirement. OpUtils’ DHCP server monitoring supports commonly used DHCP servers including:
- Microsoft DHCP server 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2019
- Palo Alto DHCP server
- Linux ISC DHCP server
- CISCO DHCP server
- Fortinet DHCP server
Getting started with OpUtils
OpUtils is more than just a DHCP server monitoring solution. It is an affordable, easy-to-use, real-time monitoring solution geared towards helping network engineers efficiently manage their IT resources. With advanced IP address management and switch port mapping capabilities, OpUtils features more than 30 built-in tools that enable effective troubleshooting. Helping you secure and optimize usage of your network’s IP and switch port resources, OpUtils offers rogue detection and other networking tools such as Wake on LAN and bandwidth monitoring.
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