Education | Grand Erie District School Board

The Adonis DNS/DHCP Appliance™ - The Other “Great One”

BACKGROUND

Brantford, Ontario’s claim to fame is being the hometown of hockey great, Wayne Gretzky. For Mark Osborne, Supervisor of Information Technology Infrastructure, Brantford is the headquarters of the Grand Erie District School Board and network hub for the medium sized school board. The board covers an area of more than 4,000 sq. km. in south-central Ontario with a population of approximately 250,000 persons.

OPPORTUNITY

In 1998, when the school boards in the Counties of Brant, Haldimand and Norfolk merged to form the Grand Erie District School Board, the Information Technology Services staffs were faced with the undaunted task of managing three different DNS architectures. In today’s economy, mergers and acquisitions are activities not limited to the private sector. Take the amalgamation of municipalities and boards of education for instance. Such transitions present IT staff with many obstacles to overcome the least of which is upon what platform should DNS be standardized.

SOLUTION

Like the new Board’s vision stated, “Growing Excellence ... Inspiring Success”, Osborne realized that with a carefully chosen and implemented DNS platform, success would follow. Having selected the award-winning Adonis DNS Appliance as GEDSB’s DNS platform of choice, Information Technology Services has not looked back. Just as the Board is “united in [its] purpose to inspire and support all [its] learners to reach their full potential”,so is Information Technology Services. With limited resources, Osborne has saved countless hours since he installed the Adonis DNS Appliance. Osborne previously managed DNS operations on 3 separate servers. Today, with 3 Adonis units - one primary and two as secondary servers – Osborne manages the board’s DNS from his Windows Server 2000 client on which he installed the Adonis Management Console. The easy-to-use Java technology GUI provides him with access to a full suite of management tools to configure and deploy his DNS.

Osborne leverages the appliance’s Live Data Check and Validation feature. Previously he did not validate data. Today, Adonis performs a live data check before he deploys his configuration live. Now, errors, previously detected when problems arose, are defined by Adonis, so Osborne can quickly correct them.

Edits to zone files previously were once very difficult tasks. With the Adonis DNS Appliance, Osborne now moves data between zones by performing a simple cut, copy or paste of data. With the elimination of manual data re-entry, problems caused by human error have significantly reduced.

IMPACT

What does this mean to Osborne and his users? Osborne reports, “My job has been made easier. I’ve received no reports or complaints of a down DNS from my users. Adonis is reliable and easy-to-use. It provides the Grand Erie District School Board with maximum uptime. That’s critical when all services with the school board rely on the Adonis DNS Appliance, like e-mail, video conferencing, various accounting and maintenance applications, assorted educational applications for schools, web services, and the list goes on.”

When Osborne and his team required assistance, BlueCat Networks’ customer service was there to offer assistance. “Staff was very knowledgeable and the level of service was excellent. Telephone support was very good.” Osborne reports that Information Technology Services was able to easily configure the Adonis appliances, and build the Board’s new DNS infrastructure despite not having an extensive knowledge of BIND. “Like BlueCat Networks says, Adonis does take the grind out of BIND,” notes Osborne.

The Board has recently migrated from Novell to Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and thanks to the Adonis functionality, leverages the Active Directory features offered in Windows Server 2003. Because BlueCat Networks’ engineers designed features into the Adonis DNS Appliance that facilitate easy integration with Active Directory, Osborne and his team now provide BIND-based DNS services throughout the board. Osborne performs Dynamic DNS (DDNS) updates to his authoritative DNS records without using the management console or editing zone files. Adonis’ Active Directory Integration Wizard steps him through the process of enabling Active Directory Integration on the Adonis hardware.

At the Grand Erie District School Board, the Adonis DNS Appliance is considered the other “Great One.”