Like all modern businesses, law firms have a critical need for uptime. One such law firm recently suffered network outages to the tune of a $7.5 million/hour revenue loss, impacting 33 branch offices. That’s when they turned to Infoblox to fix the issue.
Before Infoblox was brought in to modernize, this massive law firm was using spreadsheets for IP address management. The first change brought in was DHCP and they later added in DNS. This allowed them to transition from Microsoft domain controllers to an Infoblox package with automated IPAM, and consolidated DNS and DHCP. SD-WAN was then added.
The law firm decided that it was the right time to modernize their systems. But the modernization decision can be a challenging one. How much downtime is too much? How to determine if new and better capabilities are needed, or are they overkill?
A new IT director at the firm wanted to consolidate, reduce and centralize the number of directory servers along with implementing SD-WAN, and re-architecting their global network. Beyond improving overall stability, the firm decided that it wanted every location to have direct Internet access.
There was another strategic element to the firm’s decision. The firm wanted a future-proof approach, one that would not only upgrade the network to where it needed to be in 2023, but they wanted the technology in place that could scale and support the firm for the next five years.
Before Infoblox, the firm’s reliance on Microsoft for DNS and DHCP delivered horrific DNS stability issues. The firm installed the Infoblox Trinzic 1400 series in their data centers, TE 800 series in a major overseas office, and TE-100s in global branch offices to provide local survivability.
The firm then decided to upgrade the TE-100s to BloxOne DDI. The firm’s strategic thinking was that branches would be best managed from the cloud, but they weren’t ready to migrate their entire data center to the cloud.
The firm saw using DNS for GSLB as a resiliency mechanism.
