A Brief Introduction to IPAM and Infrahub

IPAM Remains a Key Feature for Infrastructure Automation

Even as infrastructure automation continues to advance with the help of modern tools like Infrahub, certain functions continue to be an ever present necessity for success. IP Address Management (IPAM) remains one of those cornerstones. While Infrahub’s ability to have a truly custom schema and data model is essential to many organizations, we also know how fundamental IPAM is. That’s why, instead of requiring you to create an IPAM schema from scratch, Infrahub includes the following constructs out of the box:

• IP Addresses: used to model a single IP address.
• IP Prefixes: used to model a network, sometimes referred as supernet/subnet
• IPAM Namespaces: used to model distinct, isolated contexts for managing IP resources
• Generic VRFs: Isolate and manage IP resources for each VRF, preventing address overlap.
• Security Zones: Align IP address management with security zones to ensure clear segmentation and compliance.
• Hybrid Designs: Differentiate and track IP resources across on-premises and cloud environments.
• Multi-Cloud: Isolate address spaces for multiple cloud providers to avoid conflicts and simplify management.
• Regional Compliance: Create zones for IPs tied to specific data sovereignty regulations.

IP Addresses and Prefixes are well understood and implemented in a fairly straightforward fashion. However, Infrahub IPAM Namespaces introduces a novel capability to IPAM. IPAM Namespaces offer the ability to create contained environments for many different scenarios. Some examples are:

Add a Flexible Schema, Transformations, and Change Management

Moving past the three out of the box IPAM constructs, the power of the flexible schema becomes apparent. For example, you can add attributes such as customer tenant, associated service, or related applications to customize how IPAM works for your organization.

Combining other Infrahub features (such as service and configuration generation with Transformations and Artifacts, or data versioning through built in change management) with IPAM gives infrastructure automators a further leg up on their delivery practices.

You can read more about IPAM in Infrahub documentation. Meanwhile, check out this short demo video that we created for Autocon2 where we look at the basic capabilities of IPAM in Infrahub.