Starting in v25.1.0, LiveAssurance offers a free technology preview of the DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management (DDI) Analytics add-on feature. DDI Analytics is an interactive reporting and analytics add-on feature that enables you to explore, visualize, and interact with your DDI environment.
What is a technology preview?
A technology preview provides customers with an early introduction to a new product, feature, or concept that is still in development and intended to be part of a future release. This preview is accessible to a limited set of users to test through a feature flag and is disabled by default. Technology preview of DDI Analytics is available to select, existing customers of LiveAssurance. To enroll, contact your BlueCat Sales representative.
The following limitations apply:
- Technology preview is available to customers only for the purpose of evaluation and to provide feedback. DDI Analytics is not a fully tested general release and should not be used in production environments.
- The preview may not include all the features that will be available with the future product releases. Some features of the technology preview may not be available in the final release.
- Enrollment in the technology preview will be assisted by BlueCat solution architects and solution engineers. BlueCat technical support and warranties are not included. For assistance, customers can reach out to their BlueCat Sales representative and the BlueCat VIP community forum.
- Technology preview will be available without an additional license fee to existing LiveAssurance customers as long as they're running v25.1.0 or any subsequent supported version. New customers can try the free trial version of LiveAssurance v25.1.0 or any subsequent supported version with technology preview of DDI Analytics included.
- BlueCat may end the technology preview of DDI Analytics at any time by giving notice.
Why to use DDI Analytics?
By using the intuitive DDI Analytics graphical user interface, you can easily explore, visualize, and interact with your DDI environment to uncover relationships and to get key insights so you can make more informed decisions to effectively deliver DDI services.
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(Relationships tab) Interactive logical topology and geo-spatial maps to visualize, explore, and interact with your DDI environment.
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(IPAM tab) IPAM usage data to optimize and simplify IP address management.
The following image shows the Relationships tab in the UI.
How to enable DDI Analytics?
As an Admin user, you can enable DDI Analytics (technology preview) through the LiveAssurance UI. In addition, custom users created with edit permissions for Analytics Settings can also enable this feature. Read-only users can only view the technology preview presented in the Analytics tab.
To enable DDI Analytics (technology preview):
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Select the Settings tab in the sidebar, then select .
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Click the toggle button to enable the technology preview of DDI Analytics.
The Analytics tab appears in the sidebar.
What Next?
Enable DDI Analytics to retrieve the required DDI information. For the procedure, see How does DDI Analytics work?
How does DDI Analytics work?
DDI Analytics is built on top of the LiveAssurance platform, which enables it to leverage pre-built LiveAssurance services such as authentication and data storage, and existing integrations with other services such as ServiceNow.
DDI Analytics retrieves information about DDI from BlueCat Address Manager (BAM) using BlueCat Address Manager v2 RESTful API to discover BlueCat DNS, DHCP Server (BDDS) devices and their configuration. It also retrieves BlueCat Edge information from the customer’s cloud instance to discover Edge Service Points and their configuration. Then the retrieved data is stored in a long-term database.
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From the LiveAssurance UI (that is, v25.1.0 or any subsequent supported version), select the Analytics tab in the sidebar, then select Analytics Settings.
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Under Integrity Settings, enter the Address Manager API credentials and URL.
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Select SAVE to save your settings.
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Under Edge Settings, enter the Client ID, Client Secret, and URL of your Edge cloud instance, in addition to the Edge Service Point Management URL.
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Select SAVE to save your settings.
You can now use the Relationships and IPAM usage tabs to explore, visualize, and interact with your DDI environment.
The following image shows the Analytics Settings page.