Why Multicloud Success Relies on Smart DDI Solutions

As organizations increasingly embrace the cloud, the complexity and diversity of multicloud environments pose significant challenges, demanding robust, agile management solutions. Navigating this complexity requires sophisticated tools that can integrate, secure, and optimize disparate cloud services seamlessly. EfficientIP’s latest whitepaper, Achieving Multicloud Operational Excellence: The Key Role of DDI, offers valuable insights into leveraging DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management (DDI) solutions to master these challenges. By centralizing control,enhancing visibility, enabling end-to-end automation, and simplifying compliance, DDI solutions empower businesses to operate their multicloud networks more efficiently and securely.

The multicloud market situation

Hybrid multicloud strategies are rapidly becoming the norm in enterprise IT architectures, driven by their ability to enhance agility, resilience, and cost efficiency. Research from Oracle found that a staggering 98% of enterprises utilizing public clouds are now adopting multicloud approaches to leverage the distinct advantages of different cloud providers.

This shift is paralleled by significant advancements in technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), IPv6 adoption, and the proliferation of container technologies, each contributing to a more dynamic and scalable IT infrastructure.

However, as the scale and complexity of cloud environments grows, so does their management difficulty and the potential exposure to cyber risk. Expansive multicloud environments can quickly lead to greater attack surfaces and security holes for cybercriminals to exploit.

These trends highlight the increasing need for comprehensive management tools capable of handling the increasing complexity and diversity of modern cloud environments.

The leading multicloud challenges

Managing multicloud environments introduces a range of challenges that can complicate network operations.

One of the most prevalent issues is a lack of visibility across the multicloud ecosystem. The more assets are added to the network, the harder it is to keep track of everything. Eventually organizations build up a wide array of cloud services, IoT devices, and virtualized functions connected to their environment, but have no clear, consolidated visibility of the entire network. Trends like shadow IT, with users adding applications without knowledge of IT and security teams, further compound the issue.

Poor visibility has several knock-on effects, especially when it comes to security. Threat actors exploit overlooked vulnerabilities and policy gaps across different platforms to improve their chances of infiltrating systems unnoticed. Having fragmented data on network objects connected to multifaceted hybrid networks also hinders network validation and assurance as well as compliance management and enforcement.

Organizations struggling to manage their multicloud environments due to added complexity are also prone to other operational impacts. Inefficient, manual-heavy processes for managing the lifecycle of network assets, including configuration, hinder consistency control and rollout of new services. They also increase the likelihood of misconfigurations that can cause latency issues, service outages, and security breaches. Network validation, change management, policy enforcement, and resource optimization are other areas that commonly suffer.

These challenges necessitate robust solutions that enhance visibility, automation, security, and compliance across all cloud platforms.

Where DDI solutions fit for multicloud

DDI solutions are a linchpin for ensuring seamless network operations in multicloud environments. They provide a unified platform to manage all DNS, DHCP services, and IP address spaces across every cloud and on-premise environment, no matter how complicated the network becomes.

A DDI platform contributes to a wide range of network needs, including management, automation, and security, as well as application availability and the administration of the wider IT ecosystem. The resulting boost in operational efficiency and simplified compliance brings immediate benefits including reduced OPEX costs and time savings up to 80%.

Deployment and management of IP, DHCP, and DNS

EfficientIP’s SOLIDserver IPAM is able to manage millions of IP addresses and multi-vendor DNS/DHCP services from multiple cloud providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

The centralized lifecycle management provided by DDI solutions allows for the consistent deployment and administration of IP addresses, DHCP, and DNS settings in overlay across multiple cloud platforms. This helps to prevent IP conflicts, ensures efficient use of IP space, and maintains DNS integrity, which is essential for the network’s stability and accessibility. DDI-integrated automation accelerates deployment of IP, DNS, and DHCP services, while reducing manual errors and operational inefficiencies with VMs, VPCs, public IP, or DNS records that lead to cost and security issues.

Network Source of Truth visibility

DDI solutions play a critical role in boosting visibility by establishing a reliable Network Source of Truth (NSoT). This facilitates accurate network object discovery and ensures that network data is consistent, up-to-date, and centrally accessible.

Achieving a single, authoritative view of the network state across all cloud environments enables IT teams to optimize resource allocation, quickly identifying issues to deliver efficient change management.

A recent EMA report showed that 80% of enterprises had a single source of truth, but only 20% found it effective. Using an open IPAM to feed the NSoT enhances its data quality, consequently improving its effectiveness. In addition, leveraging APIs and plugins to pull data helps empower end-to-end network automation.

EfficientIP has a suite of DDI solutions that can help to establish a reliable NSoT in a complex cloud environment. Alongside our IPAM capabilities, Cloud Observer is a discovery tool to view, track, and consolidate highly accurate data on all cloud assets to assist with informed risk management and improved operational efficiency.

Enabling end-to-end network automation

DDI serves as a Network Automation Hub, helping to streamline network and security operations through built-in NSoT and integration with APIs and automated workflows. Because this automation extends across DNS, DHCP, and IPAM functionalities, it enables end-to-end resource and service lifecycle management from rapid provisioning and configuration changes up to decommissioning in response to network demands.

EfficientIP SOLIDserver APIs eliminate slow, manual-heavy processes to bring automation between the IPAM repository or other DDI services and the IT ecosystem, streamlining security policy design and implementation, configuration compliance management, network validation, incident management, and new service deployment. As an example, seamless integration with orchestration tools and configuration managers including Terraform, VMware vRealize, Ansible, Chef, and Puppet, is made possible, accelerating DevOps and Infrastructure as Code initiatives.

Delivering DDI observability

DDI observability enables real-time monitoring and management of network health and performance in cloud multicloud environments, providing insights into traffic patterns, service availability, and potential disruptions.

EfficientIP’s DDI Observability Center delivers this essential capability through a unified cloud-based portal with all telemetry and analytics in one place. This modern monitoring capability cuts through the complexity of a multicloud environment and empowers teams to easily access actionable and reliable information on the state and effective performance of their entire DDI infrastructure.

Managing DNS Security

DDI improves DNS security in cloud and hybrid environments, offering centralized control and oversight of DNS transactions and configurations. As a protective DNS Security solution, DNS Guardian is specifically designed to ward off threats like DDoS and data exfiltration, and features Client Query Filtering (CQF) for application access control to prevent lateral movement and help meet Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) requirements.

Alongside this, DNS Threat Pulse provides a relevant and actionable DNS threat data feed while DNS Intelligence Center facilitates active threat detection and investigation. Organizations benefit from improved resilience against threats, as well as compliance with critical laws and regulations like GDPR and NIS2 which hinge on risk visibility.

Optimizing Application Traffic Routing

Finally, DDI also plays a crucial role in optimizing application traffic routing across multiple hosting environments, directing users to the optimal server considering location, performance, and load. EfficientIP’s Edge DNS GSLB tackles the complexity of multicloud environments by offering intelligent DNS resolution and traffic routing at the edge of the network to deliver optimized application performance and scalability, seamless user experience, and enhanced resilience.

Want to learn more on how DDI solutions can help you run your hybrid multicloud environment smoothly, efficiently, and securely? Download the new Whitepaper: Achieving Multicloud Operational Excellence: The Key Role of DDI.