Bright Days Ahead

Seeking a new solution for Internet Protocol (IP) address management

Over 20+ years, as IP-enabled devices like tablets, smartphones, desktop computers, and gaming consoles proliferated at IU, the Campus Networks team built a homegrown system to provide the management infrastructure for the associated Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services.

That era is ending. In 2022, we will convert to a vended product to handle our IP address management needs. Having a vended solution provides an extra level of support for IP address management and mitigates risk for these vital services.

Streamlining storage and virtualization

For 2022, our infrastructure team plans to support the use of container-based workloads, expanding ease of use while providing Kubernetes orchestration. This moves closer to enabling infrastructure as code in support of enterprise application development and service delivery.

The team will also optimize self-service delivery, enabling virtual machine (VM) administrators to create VMs, allocate resources to them, adjust resources as needed to meet performance demands, and, when desired, destroy VMs.

New hardware and design builds a stronger research network

As IU’s high performance computing demands have increased in recent years, our Research Technologies (RT) division has made significant investments and improvements in both compute and storage.

This year, Campus Networks will work with RT colleagues to improve the research network by implementing a new spine-leaf design and refreshing its hardware. Doing so ensures the revamped network can keep pace with RT’s investments in compute and storage while giving IU researchers the capacity and reliability they need.