DNS, DHCP and DFS!

Inventorying the IT Network Infrastructure

The DNS, DHCP and DFS feature of Docusnap can be used to scan and document the following services in your network:

• Microsoft Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
• Microsoft Domain Name System (DNS)
• Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) roots

Easy Scanning and Documentation of Microsoft DHCP and Microsoft DNS

DNS is one of the most important services in every network. Its main task is to respond to name resolution requests. The DHCP protocol allows you to automatically integrate a computer or an active network component into your network without having to configure it manually.

The properties and information Docusnap retrieves via DHCP include:

• Configuration options
• IP range allocations
• IP range options
• IP exclusion ranges
• Active leases

For DNS, Docusnap retrieves – among others – the following information (IT documentation data):

• General information
• Forward lookup zones
• Reverse lookup zones
• Primary, secondary, stub, and cache zone types
• Zone properties
• DNS addresses
• Statistics

Both for DHCP servers and for the DNS services, the Microsoft DHCP inventory and the Microsoft DNS inventory can be performed from within the wizard or scheduled for later execution by the Docusnap Server. Docusnap retrieves the basic information for these scans from the Active Directory services configuration. In the Microsoft DNS inventory and the Microsoft DNS inventory processes, Docusnap uses the standard LDAP protocol (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

Besides the visualization of your data in the form of Visio plans, you can have Docusnap generate many meaningful reports with a wealth of information. With a few clicks, you can adapt the format of your reports and plans (for visualization examples, see Visualization) to the corporate design of your company.

The following reports and graphical plans are supplied with Docusnap:

• DHCP Overview report
• DNS Overview report
• Visualization of managed / unmanaged IP ranges of the Microsoft DHCP server

Documentation of Microsoft DFS roots

The third feature of the new DNS, DHCP and DFS feature covers the inventory and documentation of Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) roots. A wizard helps you retrieve DFS server information. The inventory includes namespace data and replication settings. In various reports, you can visualize the information retrieved by Docusnap in a meaningful way. The creation and distribution by e-mail of these reports can be timed using the Scheduler.