Leading Health, Fitness and Media Company Empowers
DNS, Hybrid Network Visibility and Security
with Infoblox
Overview
For more than two decades, this market-leading health, wellness, media and nutritional enterprise based in the United States has delivered fitness solutions to help people achieve their health, weight loss and income goals. With more than 2.8 million subscribers, the company offers over 100 programs, almost 5,000 on-demand training videos and nearly 500 livestream workouts. To power its business, the company relied for years on Microsoft DNS/DHCP as the backbone of its corporate network. But with over 900 employees, problems with internal DNS, orphaned records and the lack of hybrid and cloud network endpoint visibility caused increased IP conflicts, outages and network reliability issues. Adding complexity were thousands of on-premises data center servers and hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) running in the AWS public cloud. Accordingly, the company turned to Infoblox for a more reliable, better organized core network services solution.
Situation: Improve Core Network Reliability with Enterprise-Grade DDI
The continuing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic combined with growing trends in the home health and fitness industry, aggressive marketing and expanding operational and cloud requirements placed increasing demands on the company’s core network services. It used Microsoft DNS/DHCP in its corporate network data centers, but frequent and increasing problems with internal DNS, orphaned records and the lack of hybrid and cloud network endpoint visibility meant escalating IP conflicts, outages and disruptive network reliability issues. Migration to an enterprise-grade DNS, DHCP and IPAM (DDI) solution was long overdue. Further, thousands of on-premises data center servers and hundreds of AWS public cloud VMs added complexity and required simplified organization, better IP address visibility and management and more reliable delivery of hybrid core network services.
Challenge: Reliability, Visibility and Security with Seamless Network Migration
Given prior network disruptions, the company wanted to solve several challenges, including network uptime, visibility and security. It specified centralized management for transparency, robust, enterprise-grade IP address management (IPAM) and DHCP failover for “always on” service availability. The company also required internal authoritative DNS and a secure recursive DNS service for outbound queries. On-demand visibility into network data for historical audit and compliance support, utilization, performance, DNS security alerting and future capacity planning were leading priorities.
With its online delivery model for programs, on-demand videos and livestream workouts, security was also a concern. The firm used Palo Alto Networks for DNS security but wanted additional DDI-integrated security to protect its infrastructure, data, partners and users against command and control, ransomware, malware, Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA), fast flux, DNS Messenger and data exfiltration over DNS. Both network and security requirements called for a modernized DDI architecture.
A seamless migration from Microsoft to Infoblox DDI without service interruptions was essential for maintaining business continuity, revenue and strong brand value. The company selected Infoblox in part for its reliability and track record in orchestrating thousands of successful mission-critical Microsoft-to-Infoblox migrations managed by platform-trained and experienced professional services experts on staff.
Solution: Network Modernization, Visibility and Security
With a very small IT staff, the company needed simplicity and “set and forget” reliability. IT deployed an Infoblox Grid Manager and Grid Manager Candidate, including fully managed IPAM, internal authoritative DNS, DNS recursion to the top-level domain and DHCP failover for resiliency and redundancy. These solutions expanded transparency, visibility and reliability across the network.
Customer Profile: This American health, wellness, media, nutritional and marketing company serves nearly 3 million subscribers. It delivers physical fitness and nutritional programs, videos and livestream workouts to help people achieve their health, weight loss and income goals.
Situation: The company was seeking to improve its DNS, DHCP and IPAM (DDI) reliability and organization by replacing its existing Microsoft DNS/DHCP platform. It wanted to provide a consistent network experience across its on-premises data centers and AWS cloud.
Challenge: The firm needed to ensure business continuity and increase IT efficiency and effectiveness with automation, visibility and security integration capabilities.
Initiatives: Upgrade to a modernized, scalable DDI solution with comprehensive network visibility managed through a single control plane, Ensure continuous uptime, high availability and redundancy even during network migration, Enable enterprise IPAM, internal and external DNS, DHCP failover and reporting, Access on-demand network data for audit/compliance, performance and threat events and predictive analytics, Deploy DDI-integrated security and ecosystem solutions to protect partners, affiliates and end users from malware and cyber security attacks
Results: Establish security from the network up using secure, enterprise-grade DDI, Ensure database redundancy, network resiliency and reliable uptime, Integrate with existing security capabilities while hardening the system-wide security posture
Infoblox Reporting and Analytics was also added to improve on-demand network visibility, gain network insights and make network data more actionable. Rather than being buried in the network, the company’s rich DDI metadata is now visible and accessible through templated and customizable dashboards and reports. It can perform search, predictive analytics and graphical visualizations for endpoint, performance, security forensics, access logging, audit and compliance data, gaining superior visibility and improved network management to support consistently reliable uptime.
For security, the firm uses Palo Alto DNS security but chose to add Infoblox’s on-premises and cloud-managed BloxOne Threat Defense Advanced for constantly updated protection against today’s most pernicious cyberthreats. The company wanted the proven, market- and time-tested security capabilities of BloxOne Threat Defense Advanced to help secure DNS, enhance alerting and protect vendors and users. IT liked the idea of fast and easy administration, with Infoblox’s contextual DDI data integrated into the threat defense and security solution.
Results: Modernized Core Network Services Deliver Reliability, Visibility and Security
The company’s migration from Microsoft DNS/DHCP to Infoblox was flawless. Because it had other network upgrades in process, the company planned a gradual transition over four months. The DNS cutover took one evening. The remaining infrastructure was reconfigured from Microsoft to the Infoblox Grid over six weeks. The firm redefined all its domain controllers as forwarders to the Infoblox Grid and established an authoritative database. Altogether, the migration took less than 40 hours and required very little effort to make DNS safe, secure and reliable.
With Infoblox, the company can now provide unparalleled dependability, quality, personalized service and support for its fitness and nutritional subscribers and business associates. Infoblox supplies the platform that enables full network visibility, reliable network availability, uptime and redundancy, along with consistent enterprise DNS for on-site, off-site and connected users anywhere. In addition, DDI modernization helps to future proof IT investments as the company considers further migration to the cloud. On-demand data access improves network visibility and management and speeds network decision making and response—features that are especially valuable for a small IT team.
Infoblox security solutions harden the company’s security capabilities and help it deliver a strong response to protect infrastructure, data and remote workers, as well as its fitness subscribers and business associates. These security tools and integrations intensify network protection against increasingly frequent and complex security threats across the company’s AWS network. By building security from the network up, the company can leverage its DDI metadata for deep contextual visibility and insights to improve control and security efficiency, while also lowering security costs and making other security tools more effective. Using Infoblox’s reliable, modernized network and security platforms, the company can continue its nearly quarter century of empowering people to realize their health, fitness and income goals.