Introduction
As enterprises accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, NetOps and CloudOps teams face a familiar challenge—managing IP address space efficiently across on-premises and cloud environments. Manual processes, disconnected tools and limited visibility often slow down provisioning of IP addresses, introduce costly IP conflicts with overlapping IP addresses and create operational silos between NetOps and CloudOps. They need to choose between speed and control—they can either move fast and risk misconfigurations and outages, or slow things down to provision IP addresses using manual ticket-driven processes, but cannot have both. The Infoblox Universal IP Address Management™ integration with Amazon VPC IP Address Manager enables enterprises to achieve both speed and control, and delivers unified control of IP address management (IPAM) across on-premises and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
IPAM Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Networks
NetOps relies on Infoblox Universal IPAM, a part of Infoblox Universal DDI™ Product Suite, and CloudOps uses Amazon VPC IPAM to manage IP resources. However, these systems operate independently—creating challenges in hybrid environments, such as:
- Manual Coordination: CloudOps and NetOps align on IP allocations through tickets or spreadsheets, slowing application rollouts.
- Overlapping IPs: Independent subnet allocations can result in conflicts that cause costly outages.
- Disconnected Systems: Without seamless synchronization, IP records quickly become outdated, leading to errors and inefficient provisioning.
- Limited Visibility: NetOps teams lack visibility into IP address block (Amazon VPC top-level pool) utilization in the Amazon VPC IPAM solution, complicating resource planning.
NetOps values control and governance. CloudOps values speed and flexibility. The result? Siloes between teams hinder efficiency and slow innovation.
Infoblox Universal IPAM Integration with Amazon VPC IPAM
Universal IPAM integrates with Amazon VPC IPAM and simplifies IPAM across on-premises and AWS environments. It addresses the IPAM challenges by enabling seamless synchronization from Amazon VPC IPAM to Infoblox Universal IPAM and eliminating IP conflicts.
Figure 1. Infoblox is integrated into Amazon VPC IPAM
It aligns NetOps and CloudOps around a single, consistent source of truth for IPAM. It provides centralized control while preserving existing team preferences and workflows, allowing:
- NetOps to use the Infoblox Portal or Universal DDI API to assign IPv4 address blocks by reading from and writing to Amazon VPC IPAM and improve visibility into IPv4 address assignments to Amazon VPC IPAM top-level pools.
- CloudOps to use the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) or AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) to request unique IPv4 address blocks from Universal IPAM, which they can then subdivide into regional pools for VPC creation.
Figure 2. Cross-team collaboration between NetOps and CloudOps
The result: a single, authoritative IPAM solution that accelerates provisioning, eliminates conflicts and maintains centralized control.
Use Cases in Detail
Use Case 1: Universal IPAM Allocates IPv4 Address Block to Amazon VPC IPAM
From Universal IPAM, NetOps centrally allocates an IPv4 address block for AWS and assigns a specific IPv4 address block to the Amazon VPC IPAM top-level pool. CloudOps then divides this address block into regional pools and does further planning from Amazon VPC IPAM. The integration enables seamless synchronization from Amazon VPC IPAM to Universal IPAM, providing visibility and optimizing resource allocations across on-premises and AWS.
Figure 3. Universal IPAM allocates IPv4 address blocks to Amazon VPC IPAM
Use Case 2: Amazon VPC IPAM Pools Fetch Unique IPv4 Address Block from Universal IPAM
CloudOps initiates the process from within AWS, requesting a unique IPv4 address block directly from Universal IPAM via the integration. Universal IPAM validates and provides a conflict-free range, which Amazon VPC IPAM then uses to create new VPCs or subnets. This ensures every AWS resource uses an authoritative, non-overlapping IP space—reducing risk of network outages and accelerating application provisioning.
Figure 4. Amazon VPC IPAM pools fetch unique IPv4 address block from Universal IPAM
Use Case 3: Unified IPAM for Hybrid Cloud Networks with Universal IPAM
Universal IPAM serves as the authoritative, enterprise-wide system for managing IP addresses and enforces policy-driven IP address allocation across on-premises and AWS. NetOps gain visibility into IP address block utilization (Amazon VPC top-level pool), enabling proactive planning, accurate reporting and conflict-free scaling. When paired with Infoblox Universal Asset Insights™, teams can correlate IP data with device, user and application context to make more informed decisions, strengthen security posture and optimize IP utilization across the entire infrastructure.
Figure 5. Centralized IPAM with Infoblox Universal IPAM
Conclusion
Infoblox Universal IPAM and Amazon VPC IPAM integration represents a significant step forward in streamlining hybrid cloud operations and enabling teams to focus on innovation rather than manual coordination. This integration:
- Enables Cross-Team Collaboration: Smooths IT workflows, allowing CloudOps team to request IPv4 address blocks from Infoblox using AWS interfaces while NetOps assigns IPv4 address blocks to Amazon VPC IPAM top-level pools using Infoblox Portal.
- Avoids Costly Outages: Automatically validates IPv4 blocks for uniqueness before assigning them to AWS, which prevents potential service disruptions that could be caused by overlapping IPs.
- Enhances Visibility: Improved visibility into IPv4 address assignments in Amazon VPC IPAM top-level pools enables NetOps to efficiently allocate resources across on-premises and AWS.
Learn More
- See a quick video of how Infoblox Universal IPAM integration with Amazon VPC IPAM helps your teams operate faster and smarter.
- Read the solution note to learn how to unify and simplify IPAM across hybrid, multi-cloud networks.
- Check out the announcement, Infoblox Streamlines IP Address Management Across Hybrid Cloud Environments with AWS.
