BlueCat Integrity Reviews

We use it for IPAM, DNS, DHCP, and cloud solutions.

We've enhanced security with the toolset. It has given us a better, real-time jump on issues that might crop up versus an issue that has already arrived and now we have to deal with it. We can catch it a little bit before it goes off, which is great. Other tools, like antivirus or malware, catch it once the machines are trying to download the packages. With DNS, you catch that as it's trying to attempt to go and ask for the download, so it's a couple of steps before, which makes it to be a lot faster in saving a lot of extra work that would be needed.

It provides a single-pane-of-glass view of our IP address space, which is very important for us. It's an item that can be used across the board for multiple teams—from network to platform teams. It's an easy-to-use portion of the toolset that's out there.

We're using its integration with ServiceNow. It's a great integration. We're expanding on those out-of-the-box tools with which integrations are provided. So, we're able to expand our capabilities. We're looking at other automations as well to expand.

It has helped reduce human error. Prior to BlueCat, which was a long time ago, we used to have spreadsheets and notepads of our records of where DNS is, what's being kept, what's not being kept, which networks are available, and which ones aren't available. I've run into some colleagues in other organizations that still do this today, and I'm surprised because we've had a lot of overlaps. We've had machines being built that are stepping on top of other machines. We've had production outages, whereas now with the IPAM capability and the real-time view into it, all those mistakes are pretty much gone. We don't have any overlap. We don't see any other machines taking over IP space from other machines. That's pretty much gone. It provides a great single source of truth for what's in our infrastructure.

It has helped to reduce downtime. When there are issues, a lot of fingers point back to its DNS. With the toolsets and with what's provided in diagnostics, we're able to prove and provide reliable information to lessen an outage in some areas so that they can start concentrating on items other than DNS. We're able to jump in and reroute and move items around to make things move faster.

It has helped to consolidate tools or applications. We rely on multiple Microsoft solutions, Linux, Unix, and Red Hat. We're able to take all that and have that under one umbrella for DNS. We're now able to streamline that type of configuration.

It has freed up our IT staff for other projects. The resiliency that it provides had me focus on being able to do other work for DNS or other tasks that are assigned to me outside of DNS. If we were looking at it in terms of manpower, it has saved about one manpower's worth of work for a year.

The most valuable piece, which has been a lifesaver, would be the BlueCat DNS resolver. BlueCat Cloud DNS resolver is a tool that takes a look into your cloud's DNS and then reports back everything it finds into BlueCat's DNS Edge solution. The Edge solution has a bunch of nice rules that you can configure to route the DNS traffic. That automation alone is a lifesaver for me for the day-to-day churn of the DNS components that change on an hourly, daily basis.

From the time that I've been using it and the input that I've been having into their engineering, they're very flexible in seeing what the issues are. They're very flexible in working on new changes within the product. I've had great input on issues that we've run into in our world when using their products.

The ease of use is where I got to give a little knock on them. Once you start using the tool, it becomes very easy. It's actually quite easy to use. The problem that I run into is documentation. The documentation could be a little bit richer. Documentation has always been a little pet peeve for me with them.

Sometimes the documentation does not really show real-world applications. Need to get tickets into support to get more details on how an item is supposed to operate or some CLI sequence may be missing in the docs.  

I am hoping to see an improved robust process to mass import/export IPAM data in their next major release.

We've been a customer of BlueCat since about 2013.

It's very stable. We've only run into one issue this past week and a half ago. We had roughly two outages all this time, and it was the second outage. That was due to a bug not in BlueCat software but in the underlying Linux bind. We actually hit it, and we were able to work around it and fix the issue and get moving again. In ten years, there were only two outages, so the system is very stable.

It scales very well. We're able to move and change things on the fly. We're able to bring up, bring down, not lose a beat, and still be in production without issues.

They're hands down fabulous. They're there in a pinch. We use their enterprise solution for support, and they are top-notch. I can't say anything wrong with them. They're there when you need them.

You have to work out a schedule with them. They just don't sit there and wait for Dave Muscat's call. Just put it that way. I have to schedule it with them, but they're there. In some cases, when we have issues where some people contact me with problems, or our customers need to have something resolved, and I'm not hitting it, I put in a ticket. It's a quick and easy process.

They're usually pretty good at responding. They sometimes respond within 15 to 20 minutes. They're sometimes a lot better than what they put out there in their SLA. We're on the phone talking quickly. In our outage situation that we had last week, within minutes, there was already an email with a link in there to jump on a call so we can start working on the issue. I'd rate them an eight out of ten.

In terms of comparing their support with the support for our previous solution, the previous solution that we had was a free Microsoft solution, so there was no support tied to that. That was just us and googling.

Positive

We had a mixture of many products. It was Windows, Sun Solaris, and spreadsheets. 

We used to be part of a division of another company, and we were being sold off into our own company. I happened to raise my hand at a meeting with only a couple of weeks left to go before the actual cutoff date. I asked what we are doing for DNS. I was told that we just put a bunch of machines together to which I said no. You don't just put a bunch of machines together. You have to have a hierarchy of a solution. There was a third-party management company that was managing our separation, and they formed a little group that looked at three different products, and BlueCat won that process.

In terms of the deployment model, we have both environments. We're on-prem with all virtual servers, and we're also in the cloud. It's an Azure cloud, but it's private to us.

Ease of deployment is there once you work out the nuances of the documentation. Once you read between the lines, It goes quite well. Deploying virtual machines is a very easy process. They've really matured in deployments of their DNS Edge solution and patching.

In terms of the deployment duration, technically, we're still deploying after all these years. When we first launched the project, the initial deployment and cutover were in the vicinity of 12 to 18 months because of the sheer amount of data that we needed to migrate. We were working with all the teams. We're in the healthcare field, so there were a lot of HIPAA regulations and time frames based on the contracts we had.

Only I was involved in its deployment. Its original deployment and any subsequent deployment were done by me. I finally got my first person to help me this week.

When it comes to maintenance, I do have a group of three guys in India. They take care of patching, and they take care of the upgrades. They take care of the low-level tickets that come in and get generated in our ServiceNow platform. They handle requests to add or remove a record.

Our outage levels have gone down to almost nothing. We're roughly 99.8% outage free at this point in time since using the product. We've only had two medium-sized outages, and neither one of those outages caused an outage. It has been reliable enough.

I can sleep at night. I haven't said that about any other product I've dealt with, whether it's Microsoft, Linux, Cisco, or anything of that nature. I can sleep at night knowing the type of redundancies and configurations that have been put in place and the collaborative engineering work that we and BlueCat have put together to make things solid for us.

They're competitive. The way they run their model is good. Could it stand some tweaking? Sure. There are some items there. One of the things I looked at in the recent past was their container solutions. You have to pay for licensing to use their containerized platform, but the licensing doesn't include the container licensing itself. I'd love to be able to have one big package per se.

They were flexible with us. We were in a model at the time where we owned the licenses, and as time progressed forward with the product, we're now in a subscription-based model, which makes it easier for us to move the product around the way we need to use it. It has made that easier for us.

I've never been the person who brings numbers into the equation when I'm dealing with the product. So, I don't know about the total cost of ownership, but according to me, it's well worth every dime we pay for it. It has streamlined our business across the board.

We evaluated Men&Mice and Infoblox. BlueCat won that process just for ease of use and ease of installation. We were also not looking at solutions that would sit on top of a Microsoft product at the time.

Make sure you have your data available. You should have your IPAM data and your DNS data. You need to be able to bring it in, so you need to have a mechanism to pull that. You can test the solution, probably in a small VMware environment. It doesn't have to be cloud. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. If you have a small lab, you can probably throw this together.

To someone at an organization who doesn’t think that they need a full-stack, integrated DDI management solution, I'd say that I don't care how big or how small an organization you are. You need some type of solution to manage your network. You need to have at least some type of IPAM. You need something that's going to keep track of your network space and your DNS space. You need to be able to look at it at a glance and be able to manage those systems and make changes on the fly. Whether you're a small school or a small business, you need to have something.

Overall, I'd rate it a nine out of ten. The reason why I rate it a nine is the documentation. I've always had problems with their documentation.

We would like to utilize BlueCat Integrity to initiate operations in multiple regions, aiming to establish a disaster recovery, scalability, and resilience plan for the APAC and MA regions.

BlueCat Integrity is user-friendly, thanks to its powerful API. Our technicians appreciate the solution's excellent graphical interface, which makes it easy to comprehend.

BlueCat Integrity is flexible, fast, and quite optimized.

Currently, our company is satisfied with BlueCat Integrity, which has granted us peace of mind. 

The most valuable features are scalability and cloud infrastructure.

During our testing phase, we encountered some issues with Active Directory and DNS reverse lookups.

I have evaluated BlueCat Integrity and will be implementing it in July. 

In the limited contact I have had with BlueCat Integrity's support, they have been excellent.

Positive

We previously utilized Microsoft on-premises, but we transitioned to BlueCat Integrity for cloud support.

The deployment process is straightforward. We intend to deploy based on regions and site types, such as forward operating bases, followed by administrative offices, headquarters, warehouses, and finally factories or plants.

Our management decided that there is a return on investment and that is why they have decided to move forward with BlueCat Integrity.

BlueCat Integrity meets our expectations and aligns with our budget forecast.

We evaluated Infoblox and chose BlueCat Integrity because it uses fewer resources and offers a better price. We appreciate their support and consulting services, as they understand that BlueCat Integrity is not widely known in the world due to being newer in the market. However, they compensate for this by providing effective consulting services that offer proof of concept and demonstrate value.

I give BlueCat Integrity a ten out of ten.

I suggest that any organization which doesn't believe they require a comprehensive, integrated DDI management solution should consider utilizing the consultation services offered by BlueCat Integrity. This will help them understand the value it brings.

I recommend that organizations try BlueCat Integrity, as they will love it.

We use BlueCat Integrity for IP networking.

BlueCat Integrity is easy to learn and use. It provides a single pane of glass view for our IP address space. The Single pane of glass is important because it allows us to manage our large environment in one place.

It has helped reduce human error by 70 percent and has helped reduce downtime by 80 percent.

We have been able to free up staff time to focus on other projects and tasks.

BlueCat Integrity's automation capabilities saved us around 80 percent of our time.

It has improved our network stability and has saved us around 40 percent of our costs.

BlueCat Integrity's scalability and user-friendliness are the most valuable features.

BlueCat Integrity can improve by increasing the amount of updates it releases.

I have been using BlueCat Integrity for two years.

I would rate the stability of BlueCat Integrity ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of BlueCat Integrity ten out of ten.

BlueCat's technical support is knowledgeable and quick to respond.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward.

BlueCat Integrity is affordable.

I would rate BlueCat Integrity nine out of ten.

We have five users within our organization.

Our client is an enterprise organization.

I recommend BlueCat Integrity to others.

We replaced our legacy solution used to manage our network with BlueCat Integrity, a vendor-backed solution.

BlueCat Integrity is easy to use for end users and not difficult for administrators. I have used much more difficult solutions that are not directly related to DDI. For end users, the solution is intuitive on a daily basis.

It provides a single pane of glass view for our IP address space, which is important for our organization.

BlueCat Integrity is flexible and user-friendly for our end users.

BlueCat Integrity has helped improve our organization by simplifying the end user's experience and improving our integration with third parties. 

Managing our DDI infrastructure globally is simple, and BlueCat's personalized relationship with us is valuable to our organization.

The interface is good, better than what we were used to.

The integration has room for improvement.

Everything related to automation can be improved.

The deployment process needs to be simplified.

I have been using BlueCat Integrity for ten years.

Yes. In-house built solution, lacking lots of features, complex to support and almost impossible to evolve or enhance with new functionalities (e.g.: IPv6 support)

The deployment took around three years because we were migrating from our pre-existing in-house tool.

The solution was deployed through an in-house team with support from BlueCat's professional services, who played a critical role in the success of our migration.

I would rate BlueCat Integrity eight out of ten.

Our company includes sixteen OS staff who use the solution for segment server management and ILO code. 

Of the twenty-four segments available, we currently use four. 

The solution includes automatic management of segments. 

The solution does not export reports in a comprehensive format that allows us to see usage, administrators, VLAN, and backups. 

A reporting format similar to Infoblox would be beneficial because theirs include VLAN and function information, LAN or WAN determinations, number of segments, usage, and backups. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable.

I would prefer the last sixteen management segments be handled through Infoblox because it is better at scaling. 

Technical support is knowledgeable but responses are often delayed. 

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Ongoing administration includes reinitiating a license that includes technical support. 

Infoblox provides better scaling and includes reports with functional information that is comprehensive. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use BlueCat Integrity to deliver DNS service to our customers.

We use the solution throughout our entire network environment.

BlueCat Integrity has an intuitive interface, making it easy to use.

It offers a unified view of our IP address space through a single-pane-of-glass interface. The unified view is essential because we can implement all the solutions while having visibility in this dashboard.

BlueCat Integrity is highly flexible. It can be used in a wide range of situations and offers numerous options for integration.

BlueCat Integrity has helped us accelerate the product implementation process and reduce the time spent on DNS.

We have saved around five hours a week per technician for troubleshooting because it is all done automatically now. This frees up their time to focus on other security products.

Since implementing BlueCat Integrity we have not had any downtime in the network.

The most valuable feature is the IPAMs, which provide visibility into all the IP addresses on the network.

The technical support is slow and has room for improvement.

I have been using BlueCat Integrity for two years.

BlueCat Integrity is highly stable.

BlueCat Integrity's technical support is unsatisfactory because they are slow to respond, and we consistently find ourselves having to reiterate our issues to them. That is why we opt for partner support instead.

Negative

We previously used Azure DNS and switched to BlueCat Integrity because it offered better visibility into the IPs.

Compared to Microsoft, BlueCat Integrity is an enterprise DNS solution that provides us with peace of mind and enables us to concentrate on other tasks without experiencing any failures.

The implementation took slightly longer compared to the implementations we have completed for other products.

We used an implementation partner service.

We have witnessed a return on investment within two years of implementing BlueCat Integrity.

Compared to other solutions, BlueCat Integrity offers a competitive price.

I give BlueCat Integrity a ten out of ten.

I mainly use Adaptive DNS for IP address management.

Adaptive DNS's best feature is DDoS protection, which stops malware and network security attacks.

Adaptive DNS only supports AWS for network automation and cloud computing and would be improved if it also supported other options like Azure or Google Cloud. In the next release, Adaptive DNS should add an option for users to migrate their IPv4 versions to v6 via cloud apps.

I've been using BlueCat Adaptive DNS for five years.

Adaptive DNS is very stable.

Adaptive DNS is scalable.

BlueCat's technical support is very good.

Positive

We also use Infoblox, but Adaptive DNS is more stable and secure.

The initial setup was very easy and could be handled even by an undergraduate engineer. The deployment time is fast, but it depends on the number of networks being used - a single network takes hardly ten minutes, but a hundred would take an hour to ninety minutes.

Adaptive DNS's price depends on your network ranges, the services you want, and the level of support you require.

I would advise other users to go for Adaptive DNS without hesitation, and I'd rate it nine out of ten.