It's easy to get IPAM up and running fairly quickly for a reasonably sized network, but as your company grows, the demands on the IPAM system are going to grow too. How do you make sure that what you are doing today will scale into the future?
Let me throw out a few things you might consider to help yourself along the way.
1. Consistency
Be consistent. Whether or not your IPAM solution supports templates, determine things like:
- Do I have standard site types that have particular IP block requirements that I can define?
- Can I create standardized IP host/range allocations (e.g. router IPs, dynamic DHCP scopes, static DHCP ranges, printers, etc.)
Then use those same templates every time!
2. Process
I talked about this in my previous post, but your IPAM system is only as good as the data it holds. IPAM must be the one repository for IP information, and always be accurate.
3. Block Allocation
Consider how you carve up your IP space today, as you're likely to be living with that decision for a long time. How can you make optimal use of your available space? 10.0.0.0/8 seems huge, but it's easy to end up unable to expand because of fragmented allocations. Write a policy for allocations and follow it!
4. IP Scanning and Discovery
I believe that scanning should be for monitoring and audit purposes, not for population of the IPAM system. How scalable will constant scanning be as your network scales? How will you handle that?
5. Resiliency
IPAM is going to be the core of your IP World. Don't let it be a single point of failure.
Do you agree? What else should we be considering to get IPAM right today and for the future?