IBM NS1 Connect

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How to extend and automate your NS1 operations across your business

By Charlie Sprankling posted Thu August 15, 2024 08:22 AM

  

Breaking Down Silos: Extending NS1’s Reach

DNS operations have traditionally been siloed, often involving manual processes that can slow down building out new applications and scaling resources up or down, all whilst achieving 100% uptime. For instance, internal DNS change requests from other teams might require a ServiceNow/support ticket, which could take 24 hours or more to action, depending on how long that ticket queue is. While IBM NS1 Connect’s DNS service is API or Portal friendly, there are usually role-based access controls or internal governance policies that keep DNS hidden from the rest of the business. But with Authoritative DNS being a crucial part of delivering a new application to the public internet, more and more non-technical users need the ability to create and publish a DNS record to the world. What if we could extend the functionality and processes from the DNS platform into other parts of the infrastructure and application world in an automated and self-service fashion? With a low-code/no-code workflow tool like IBM’s Rapid Network Automation, we can do that!

Amplifying Existing Automation Across Platforms

One of IBM RNA’s main value drivers is its ability to amplify existing automation by integrating seamlessly with various tools and platforms. RNA acknowledges existing automation practices and allows organisations to leverage what they’ve already built. For instance, if your team is using scripting languages like Python or tools like Ansible/Terraform, RNA supports these within its workflows, as easily as dragging and dropping a building block into place. It offers out-of-the-box support for many of the most popular tools out there and even allows you to edit YAML Playbooks directly within the RNA platform, making it easier to extend and integrate actions across different platforms and software. This not only streamlines processes but also frees up technical teams to focus on more complex tasks.

Additionally, RNA’s API gateway provides a centralised access point for all workflows, enabling API-triggered automations from any platform in your business. This integration capability ensures that your DNS services, managed by NS1, can be included in broader automation workflows. For example, DNS record management for CI/CD pipelines can be automated, ensuring that DNS updates occur automatically whenever new application servers are deployed, and domain names need to be created or updated.

By integrating RNA, DNS can become part of a larger, automated workflow. This is especially valuable for tasks like provisioning new applications, where DNS configurations are a necessity.

Enhanced Automation Governance and Scalability

RNA also brings enhanced governance to your automation efforts. By introducing role-based access controls, RNA ensures that existing automation becomes more secure when integrated into the platform. This governance extends across your organization, allowing you to share workflows while maintaining control over permissions. With dashboarding for time-saved (ROI) and scheduled jobs, RNA makes it easier to track and audit automation activities across various teams.

What if we want to give access to non-technical users? Well with RNA, you can empower other colleagues to initiate DNS configurations through a self-service automation tile. This means departments like marketing can quickly launch brand campaigns with new domain setups, without needing to rely on DevOps teams for every small task. This not only streamlines processes but also frees up technical teams to focus on more complex tasks.

One practical example is the ability to create an EC2 instance, select a domain, and automatically map the instance’s public IP address to a new DNS record—all within a self-service workflow. No need to manually interact with AWS or NS1. This kind of automation is demonstrated in our community templates, which you can try out for yourself.

Integrating NS1 Data into Your Operations

RNA’s extensive integration library allows you to extend NS1’s data into other business tools, even if there isn’t a native integration available. For example, security teams often crave DNS logs to correlate with their firewall data. By feeding NS1’s real-time traffic metrics into security tools, your teams can gain early insights into potential threats.

Similarly, audit logs from DNS changes can be exported into tools like Splunk, providing comprehensive visibility into who made changes and when. This real-time and historical data integration ensures better governance and faster incident response, in case of a misconfiguration. If you're using performance tools like SevOne, you can also integrate NS1’s performance and availability metrics to build baselines and predict trends, enabling proactive DNS changes to avoid potential issues.

Overcoming Challenges in Multi-Vendor DNS Environments

For organisations following best practices by setting up a multi-vendor DNS setup for redundancy, challenges often arise—especially with hyperscalers. These providers can create obstacles through vendor lock-in, such as not supporting automated primary-secondary setups, which increases the risk of single points of failure.

Advanced traffic steering records, essential during cloud migrations or for load balancing, also don’t automatically transfer between providers. This necessitates manual configuration across different portals/API’s, which is both time-consuming and prone to errors. Health checks against application front-ends are sometimes limited to the provider’s infrastructure, lacking external monitoring capabilities.

By integrating external monitoring probe data into both NS1 and other DNS providers, RNA can ensure more accurate and reliable DNS responses. Additionally, RNA can automate notifications to your desired notification system simultaneously, when an endpoint fails a health check, preventing incorrect DNS responses and outages.

Conclusion

Integrating RNA with NS1 not only enhances the capabilities of your DNS infrastructure but also extends its reach across your entire organisation. By automating processes and integrating valuable DNS data into other business tools, you can achieve greater operational efficiency and improve overall efficiency. 

For a deeper dive and demonstration into the information shared in this blog, check out our recent Webinar and reach out to your account team to trial Rapid Network Automation today, not only with NS1 but any other tools in your arsenal you are looking to enhance!


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