Changing entire network IP address scheme

[Chris Mosentine]

Hi all: I have been given a task for which I have no idea how to start or accomplish. He company I work for has gone through a merger and now I have been asked to change our entire ip addressing scheme in order to one day join our network with the larger organization.

Our current network has three nodes, one for each office: 10.1.0.0/16; 10.2.0.0/16; and 10.3.0.0/16. The larger organization uses 10.0.0.0/8 and want to move use to 10.110.0.0/22; 10.110.4.0/22; and 10.110.8.0/22.

We run oes 2015/2018 servers, zcm, groupwise, and an entire ms domain to boot. We use oes dns and dhcp services. All clients have static in addresses to boot. Just changing the ip addresses on the directory servers is daunting. And of course this would have to be done over a weekend.

As always, your help,is greatly appreciated, Chris.

[KBOYLE]

cmosentine wrote:

> Hi all: I have been given a task for which I have no idea how to
> start or accomplish.

Hi Chris,

When dealing with business issues, it is not uncommon to have someone
specify a solution rather than correctly define the problem that needs
to be solved. The first thing you have to do is read between the lines
to determine, from the proposed solution, what the actual business
problem is and then have the powers that be confirm *that* is the real
issue.

Once that has been done a number of different solutions, each having
its own timeline and costs, can be evaluated and the most appropriate
one selected.

> And of course this would have to be done over a weekend.

If wishes were horses.....


*If* a specific solution along with an unreasonable time frame is
imposed on you, you owe it to yourself and your employer to to make
your concerns known. You may then have to decide whether you will
undertake an assignment you believe will have little chance of success
or refusing to accept it and dealing with the consequences. 😞

--
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below this post.
Thank you.

[mrosen]

On 18.06.2018 16:04, cmosentine wrote:
>
> Hi all: I have been given a task for which I have no idea how to start
> or accomplish. He company I work for has gone through a merger and now I
> have been asked to change our entire ip addressing scheme in order to
> one day join our network with the larger organization.
>
> Our current network has three nodes, one for each office: 10.1.0.0/16;
> 10.2.0.0/16; and 10.3.0.0/16. The larger organization uses 10.0.0.0/8
> and want to move use to 10.110.0.0/22; 10.110.4.0/22; and
> 10.110.8.0/22.
>
> We run oes 2015/2018 servers, zcm, groupwise, and an entire ms domain to
> boot. We use oes dns and dhcp services. All clients have static in
> addresses to boot. Just changing the ip addresses on the directory
> servers is daunting. And of course this would have to be done over a
> weekend.
>
> As always, your help,is greatly appreciated, Chris.

It's hard to guess the size of your network, like in terms of how many
servers and services you have to touch. And of course I also don't know
how many coworkers you may have at your hand, but doing things in
parallel is limited by th task itself at hand.

That said, I *think*, that doing this over a weekend, which seems to
also say it won't be possible at all to run both IP address schemes in
parallel for a while, sounds implausible.

It *is* doable, but it needs a whole lot of planning, understanding, and
also simply quite some time (per server and service).

CU,
--
Massimo Rosen
Micro Focus Knowledge Partner
No emails please!
http://www.cfc-it.de

[Chris Mosentine]

Thanks for the input. Great advice. The issue is that the plan is to have all offices on the 10/8 subnet. All offices will link on an MPLS backbone. In the future the plan is to move all servers to a hosted environment. For us, I am the only person managing 12 servers and close to 200 devices across our three sites.

I see microfocus has a script to change up addresses of servers. That is a start. I was thinking of moving as many clients as possible to DHCP temporarily while the change-over takes place.

The other option I have is to change our current network sunset to 10.0.0.0/8 and then transition all devices to the new IP address scheme. Once complete I can change the subnet to match the new scheme 10.110.0.0/22. Can push out a script via ZCM to modify the subnet on all our Windows machines.

Just brainstorming. Chris.

[mrosen]

On 19.06.2018 16:44, cmosentine wrote:
>
> Thanks for the input. Great advice. The issue is that the plan is to
> have all offices on the 10/8 subnet. All offices will link on an MPLS
> backbone. In the future the plan is to move all servers to a hosted
> environment. For us, I am the only person managing 12 servers and close
> to 200 devices across our three sites.
>
> I see microfocus (MFGP - stock ticker symbol) has a script to change up
> addresses of servers. That is a start. I was thinking of moving as many
> clients as possible to DHCP temporarily while the change-over takes
> place.
>
> The other option I have is to change our current network sunset to
> 10.0.0.0/8 and then transition all devices to the new IP address scheme.
> Once complete I can change the subnet to match the new scheme
> 10.110.0.0/22. Can push out a script via ZCM to modify the subnet on
> all our Windows machines.
>
> Just brainstorming. Chris.
>
>
Yes, there is a script, but that by far doesn't take everything into
account. Let's talk SLP for instance. You have to do that manually. In
Groupwise, you have to fix the IP for the DVA manually. And so on, and
so on, and so on.

The *by far* best option you could have is to be able to run both IP
ranges in parallel for a while, and migrate servers, clients, services
from old to new one by one, at your own pace, over enough time to be
able to properly check everything's working. With the information I now
have, *I* would request a minimum of 2 weeks, better 4.

CU,
--
Massimo Rosen
Micro Focus Knowledge Partner
No emails please!
http://www.cfc-it.de

[KBOYLE]

cmosentine wrote:

> The other option I have is to change our current network sunset to
> 10.0.0.0/8 and then transition all devices to the new IP address
> scheme.

I hate doing this when I don't have all the facts but as long as you
want to brainstorm, how about this?

Setup a DHCP server or servers to provide dynamic or fixed addresses in
the current subnet(s) for each office and transition all workstations
to DHCP address allocation in preparation for future address changes.

Begin the transition for a specific site: adjust the DHCP server to
assign addresses in the new subnet to the workstations (only?).

Leave IP addresses for your servers as is and provide routing to allow
workstations to access the servers.

If you plan server upgrades, perhaps with each upgrade you can
transition each server, one at a time, into the new network.

I agree with Massimo. This would be much easier and safer if both old
and new networks could work in parallel. It would allow you to
transition small groups of devices over time and ensure that everything
is working correctly. It is much more likely would be able to fall back
should issues arise.

--
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below this post.
Thank you.

[KBOYLE]

Kevin Boyle wrote:

> Begin the transition for a specific site: adjust the DHCP server to
> assign addresses in the new subnet to the workstations (only?).

Actually, I would include printers too. You would have to look at what
other devices might be on the LAN: cameras, etc.

--
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below this post.
Thank you.

[mdallair_mels]

Hi,

I have not a solution for you but don't try to use NAT with NCP. It does not work at all.

Martin

[Chris Mosentine]

Thanks for the replies. Of course I understand there are a lot of aspects of this change that would not be part of the script provided by Microfocus. We run a domain also and that too will take a lot of manual work. I like the idea of creating a separate network withe routing between the too. I will look more closely into doing that. Chris.