IPmanager's requirement of Class-C space

[getnetworks]

We've been setting up a full infrastructure this weekend to test out the entire gamut of your offering. While the majority has gone smoothly, we have found the IPmanager piece to be absolutely useless, and solely because you require Class-C allocations in it to set up any pools. We have allocations ranging from /24 to /29, and the allocation we were going to use for this test is a /27. Given your product can't handle that, we can't even complete testing. Looks like we wasted the entire weekend on this process. Assuming only Class-C allocations would be used/available is so *very* unrealistic. For a proper implementation of IP management, you can't be that short-sided, and a hosting infrastructure needs to have IP address management in an automated fashion to be useful.

Also, we saw in the forums that it appears you are basing everything on RDNS records (and most recently ping responses). Both of these are horrendous.

For one, how hard is it to simply manage a small database of IP addresses and simply mark one as used when a ISPmanager or VDSmanager account requests one for use and on the flip-side, when one of those accounts terminate, you simply trigger an event to mark it back as available?!?! That is how IP management is done in Parallels Business Automation Server (previously HSPc); it couldn't get any easier or simplified.

Secondly, whomever came up with the bright idea to simply ping an IP to see if it is available needs a fry pan upside the head. What if an existing VPS is rebooting, crashed and stopped or suspended for various reasons? It won't be pingable, and thus you run into a problem of potentially issuing a duplicate IP to a new VPS.

As a result of both of these, the IPmanager is absolutely useless. It provides no rational or reliable method of automating IP address management. We were getting very happy about the whole ISP/VDS/IP/DNS/BILL(manager) product-line and how things were working until we hit this issue. Now it looks like we'll have to scrap considering the product-line entirely as proper IP management is a must for any new hosting infrastructure we put into place.

Very disappointed.

[getnetworks]

Tanya/Igor,

Your thoughts on IPmanager please. Hopefully you can see from our feedback how unusable it is in its current state.

[tanya]

Hello,

Originally Posted by getnetworks

We've been setting up a full infrastructure this weekend to test out the entire gamut of your offering. While the majority has gone smoothly, we have found the IPmanager piece to be absolutely useless, and solely because you require Class-C allocations in it to set up any pools. We have allocations ranging from /24 to /29, and the allocation we were going to use for this test is a /27. Given your product can't handle that, we can't even complete testing. Looks like we wasted the entire weekend on this process. Assuming only Class-C allocations would be used/available is so *very* unrealistic. For a proper implementation of IP management, you can't be that short-sided, and a hosting infrastructure needs to have IP address management in an automated fashion to be useful.

IPmanager works with any allocation ranging.

Originally Posted by getnetworks

Also, we saw in the forums that it appears you are basing everything on RDNS records (and most recently ping responses). Both of these are horrendous.

It isn't true. I think you undestand something wrong.

Originally Posted by getnetworks

For one, how hard is it to simply manage a small database of IP addresses and simply mark one as used when a ISPmanager or VDSmanager account requests one for use and on the flip-side, when one of those accounts terminate, you simply trigger an event to mark it back as available?!?! That is how IP management is done in Parallels Business Automation Server (previously HSPc); it couldn't get any easier or simplified.

We have another way to this matter. It isn't necessary to create and delete accounts. A great number of servers can use the same account.

Originally Posted by getnetworks

Secondly, whomever came up with the bright idea to simply ping an IP to see if it is available needs a fry pan upside the head. What if an existing VPS is rebooting, crashed and stopped or suspended for various reasons? It won't be pingable, and thus you run into a problem of potentially issuing a duplicate IP to a new VPS.

Ping isn't a primary factor to take a decision. It can be used optionally to define busy IP-address.

Originally Posted by getnetworks

As a result of both of these, the IPmanager is absolutely useless. It provides no rational or reliable method of automating IP address management. We were getting very happy about the whole ISP/VDS/IP/DNS/BILL(manager) product-line and how things were working until we hit this issue. Now it looks like we'll have to scrap considering the product-line entirely as proper IP management is a must for any new hosting infrastructure we put into place.

In fact, all is OK. A great number of our clients use IPmanager very successfully.

[getnetworks]

Originally Posted by tanya

IPmanager works with any allocation ranging.

Then please explain how as the documentation is very weak on this. The docs explicitly say to enter a Class-C address, and we have tried everything we can think of to get a /27 into it at once (we don't want to have to manually type in every address in that block).

Originally Posted by tanya

It isn't true. I think you undestand something wrong.

Then please clarify. If this isn't the case why must some "file" also be uploaded with resolution information (and on that topic, what exactly is the format for this file) if you are somehow simply using RDNS to maintain availability. The fact we have to manually prepare some kind of file with lookup details certainly does make it appear that you just base it off of RDNS lookups.

Originally Posted by tanya

We have another way to this matter. It isn't necessary to create and delete accounts. A great number of servers can use the same account.

Please explain this statement as it is very unclear.

Originally Posted by tanya

In fact, all is OK. A great number of our clients use IPmanager very successfully.

Maybe for what they are doing this true, but not for all providers (and we've been around since 1995). The documentation is very poor, and given that we can't see how to make this work, we doubt anyone who hasn't been given extra help on this topic has found IPmanager to work "very successfully".

We're starting to burn through our trial period now and if we can't get this working soon, we'll likely have to go the Virtualmin/Cloudmin route.

Looking forward to the clarification in your response.

[tanya]

Hello,

I see we don't understand each other. Therefore, we decide to write an expanded documentation with pictures on this topic in the nearest time.

[getnetworks]

Originally Posted by tanya

Hello,

I see we don't understand each other. Therefore, we decide to write an expanded documentation with pictures on this topic in the nearest time.

That's great news and all, but how does that *HELP* us at this very moment?!? We've got two days left on our review of your product, and we can't get 'simple' things working, and your staff has yet to provide any assistance on any of our inquiries (other than just saying "why would you want to do that?", "that feature is coming" and "our docs need updating"). That is not customer-focused resolution of problems.

[GakcaT]

I'll try to clarify the situation.

We've been setting up a full infrastructure this weekend to test out the entire gamut of your offering. While the majority has gone smoothly, we have found the IPmanager piece to be absolutely useless, and solely because you require Class-C allocations in it to set up any pools. We have allocations ranging from /24 to /29, and the allocation we were going to use for this test is a /27. Given your product can't handle that, we can't even complete testing. Looks like we wasted the entire weekend on this process. Assuming only Class-C allocations would be used/available is so *very* unrealistic. For a proper implementation of IP management, you can't be that short-sided, and a hosting infrastructure needs to have IP address management in an automated fashion to be useful.

In the documentation it is not fully explained. When you add a new network of C-class It doesn't mean that IPmanager can works only with C-class network. For example: you have C-class network – 12.34.56.0 and you want to operate with 12.34.56.0/27 network. You should create an user and add 12.34.56.0/27 (or IP addresses range 12.34.56.0-12.34.56.12 network in his pool of available IP addresses.

Also, we saw in the forums that it appears you are basing everything on RDNS records (and most recently ping responses). Both of these are horrendous.

In order to determine IP address availability IPmanager uses RDNS. If an IP address doesn't have PTR record IPmanager thinks that the IP address is available. Optionally you can add verifying by the “ping” command.

For one, how hard is it to simply manage a small database of IP addresses and simply mark one as used when a ISPmanager or VDSmanager account requests one for use and on the flip-side, when one of those accounts terminate, you simply trigger an event to mark it back as available?!?! That is how IP management is done in Parallels Business Automation Server (previously HSPc); it couldn't get any easier or simplified.

In IPmanager we use another scheme. IPmanager doesn't mark IP addresses as “reserved” or “available”. IPmanager looks for an available IP address in the user IP addresses pool. Users can use same IP ranges. In this case IPmanager gives the IP address for user which first sent a request for IP address allocation.