EOL Asset DB – IP addresses – IPAM

The IT Assets Database was replaced by the IT Admins CMDB and is EOL / End of Life, no further development will be done on this project.

Documenting and managing IP addresses is probably one of the most challenging parts of any IT documentation. As member of the IT department, you often face the question – which IP address is free and can be used for what ever new system you need to put in place and what system is actually behind an IP address.

Way to often we rely on simple PING requests to the IP address, but we can’t be certain the system is online nor that it actually will answer the PING request at all that it is finding its way back to us.

Secondarily there is DNS that might help us along the way, but is this DNS entry actually still accurate, if one ever existed and even if – is the system probably retired by now?

This all comes back to the need of an IP address documentation and management system, short IPAM for IP Address Management.

Having an IT Assets database, it only makes sense to track and document used IP addresses within the assets management application. Out of this reason this module was created, allowing you to create VLANs – respective IP scopes and define if the IP is in use or not. You further can assign it to a workstation, printer or server and other network equipment. The IP will show this in the IPAM table directly as well as in the assigned device.

Going in to more detail, you even can break this down to MAC addresses, if you documented them properly.

In order to use this module, you need to click on VLANs and create a new VLAN. This works like this:

  1. enter the VLAN number (can be 0 as well – a VLAN and IP segment are normally exist only once, but noting will really limit you to that)
  2. give the VLAN a name – a friendly display name like servers, workstations, DMZ that you can use to filter in the actual IP list
  3. now you need to provide a IP Notation
    1. this has to be in the format 0.0.0.0/0 or IP/bitmask
      1. 192.168.0.0 with a mask of 255.255.255.0 would result in to 192.168.0.0/24
      2. 10.0.0.0 with a mask of 255.255.0.0 would result in to 10.0.0.0/16
    2. using proper subnetting conform bit masks like 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, etc. is possible as well
  4. provide a description that helps you understanding the VLAN / IP segment
  5. finally – once you are read – click on generate IPs
    1. this will generate the IP scope from the first use able to last use able IP address
      1. 192.168.0.0/24 would mean the IPs are generated from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254
      2. 10.0.0.0/16 would generate IPs from 10.0.0.1 to 10.0.255.254
      3. subnetting IP scopes will be generated correctly as well
      4. the network IP (first IP – not usable) and broadcast IP (last IP – not usable) will not be generated
    2. calculating the IP addresses might take a little bit, depending on the speed of your SQL server and your workstation
      1. you will see and dialog box confirming the generation was finsihed

Now you can actually assign statuses to those IP addresses in the IPAM and combine the IP with your assets if you wish to do so. In any case, an IP can be in various statuses like DHCP, reserved, excluded and does not necessarily be associated with an asset.

Some button allow you to quickly HTTP/HTTPS in to the IP or execute a PING or attempted DNS resolve.

Data field and reference overview

  • VLAN / VLAN Notation (CIDR) / VLAN Description / VLANName
    • depends on the sub-table VLANs
  • IP Address
    • buttons for PING / HTTPS / HTTP / RESOLVE
  • IP Type (status of the IP address)
    • static, DHCP, reserved, excluded
  • HostName
  • Description
  • Relations to
  • Notes and TAGs
  • Previous relations (where was this IP used before)

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