Cloud observability, endpoint risk insights, high availability—all now in DDI Central 5100

We’re thrilled to announce the release of ManageEngine DDI Central 5100 (v5.10)—the version that brings it all together: cloud observability, endpoint risk insights, and high availability.

Following the success of version 5.01, which introduced REST APIs and powerful enhancements for DNS, DHCP, and IPAM operations, version 5.10 takes a major leap forward with a clear spotlight on integrations. With this version, DDI Central transforms into your unified console for cloud, endpoint, and DDI visibility.
 

ManageEngine suite integration

Kick-starting ME cross-domain intelligence: DDI Central + Endpoint Central

DDI Central has kick-started its ManageEngine suite integration with support for Endpoint Central, covering both on-premises and cloud editions. This marks the beginning of deeper platform integrations—enabling cross-domain insights and centralized diagnostics across your IT and network infrastructure, bringing endpoint visibility directly into your DDI workflows.

But what does this mean for your DNS, DHCP, and IP address management workflows?

With this integration, DDI Central now brings rich, system-level context into the heart of your core network services. The visualizations and metrics displayed—including endpoint OS details, memory, disk usage, patch status, and vulnerabilities—are more than just charts. They’re operational game-changers.

Why this matters for DNS, DHCP, and IPAM admins:

  • Risk-aware IP management:
    Know exactly which endpoint is using a lease—and whether it’s vulnerable. Tying CVEs to IP addresses lets you prioritize patching based on real network exposure.


     

  • Faster threat containment:
    See which unpatched or high-risk machines are active on the network. Use this intelligence to isolate endpoints by revoking leases or blocking DNS resolution for rogue clients. Also admins can investigate blocked DNS access attempts alerts triggered by DDI Central and drill down into a DHCP lease to evaluate endpoint legitimacy in real time.


     

  • Context-rich troubleshooting:
    Correlate DNS activity, IP allocations, and device health in one place. If a device fails to resolve a critical name or drops DHCP repeatedly, you now have full context—OS version, last boot time, patch state—to resolve the issue fast.


     

  • Improved SLA and compliance tracking:
    Centralized visibility into patch compliance and system integrity helps validate SLA adherence across distributed environments, tying device state back to IP-based infrastructure.

  • Operational awareness at a glance:
    From disk usage spikes to OS misconfigurations—everything is mapped to an IP. It’s not just about knowing what’s broken—it’s about knowing where to look and what to fix first.

  • Pinpoint vulnerable, unpatched, or rogue endpoints by mapping DHCP leases to detailed system and security profiles.

This integration empowers security and IT teams with full context during investigations —across DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and endpoint telemetry—all from a single pane of glass.

AWS: Cloud observability integration

With the rise of hybrid networks, DDI Central 5100 introduces cloud observability that enables you to visualize and monitor network assets hosted in AWS cloud environments—all from a unified pane of glass.

DDI Central seamlessly integrates with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide deep visibility and centralized oversight of key cloud infrastructure components—Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, Elastic Container Services (ECSs), Relational Database Services (RDSs), Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), and their subnets—through its cloud observability capabilities.

Rather than managing these assets in isolation, DDI Central acts as an intelligent overlay, discovering and mapping AWS resources into an intuitive, unified view. This enables network administrators to monitor, visualize, and contextualize their AWS environments alongside on-premises infrastructure, making hybrid network management more effective and informed.

Key capabilities:

  • Unified interactive cloud dashboard: See all AWS services—EC2, RDS, VPCs, ECS, subnets—in one view.


     

  • Regional breakdown and World map views: Filter services by AWS Region and visualize distribution with geo-context.




  • Subnet usage and fragmentation: Identify under/overutilized subnets, spot fragmentation, and reallocate them intelligently.

  • Service-specific panels: View instance-specific info (platform, tags, DNS) directly within DDI Central.

These insights empower admins to optimize IP utilization, track asset locations, and gain critical visibility across cloud-native infrastructure.

Supported AWS resources in DDI Central's cloud observability 

Under cloud observability, DDI Central currently supports discovery and monitoring of the following AWS resources:

EC2 Instances
Visibility into instance availability zones, states, platforms, public IPs, associated tags, and network associations.
 

Elastic IPs
Mapping of allocated IPs to instances or interfaces with visibility into allocation IDs and associations.
 

Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs)
Insights into network interface IDs, associated subnets, VPCs, instance bindings, and security group correlation.
 

RDS Instances
Monitors engine types, database states, zone allocations, and DNS-based failover readiness for high availability planning.
 

ECS Clusters and Tasks
Visualizes ECS clusters and running tasks along with their associated IPs, subnets, and region distribution. Enables admins to map services and workloads to infrastructure at a glance.

 

VPCs and subnets
Provides detailed subnet-level insights including IP usage metrics, fragmentation analysis, subnet-VPC mapping, and Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) allocation planning.

Why It matters for network admins 

For administrators juggling complex on-premises and cloud-native environments, this integration brings critical value:

Unified view of hybrid networks
No more switching between tools. View AWS and on-premises assets side-by-side within DDI Central in a single console—instances, subnets, IP leases, DNS zones—all in sync.

Contextual resource correlation
Visualize how EC2 instances are tied to subnets, Elastic IPs, and ENIs. Trace service paths across RDS, ECS, and underlying network fabric with clarity.

Faster troubleshooting and root cause analysis
Drill down into cloud components to identify failures, misconfigurations, or availability zone mismatches—without relying on guesswork or external log correlation.

Rich visual analytics and usage trends
Understand service distribution by region, monitor subnet utilization, IP availability, and track asset growth across your cloud estate.

Improved governance and control
Get visibility into security groups, IP address assignments, and DNS behaviors tied to cloud assets. Easily align resources with organizational policies.

Overlay, not intrusion
DDI Central observes and analyzes your AWS environment without altering configurations—ensuring no conflict with cloud-native operations or automation scripts.

With DDI Central’s AWS integration, network administrators gain complete situational awareness across cloud and on-premises networks—unlocking a scalable, secure, and future-ready operational model for managing modern distributed infrastructures.

Built-in high availability for Linux DNS and DHCP servers: Redundancy without complexity

In dynamic network environments, DNS/DHCP availability is non-negotiable. A momentary failure in IP lease assignment or name resolution while accessing a service can ripple through an organization—interrupting user access, bringing down services, and delaying operations.

That’s why DDI Central provides native High Availability (HA) support for Linux DNS/DHCP servers—designed to deliver failover that’s seamless, reliable, and easy to configure.

What makes It valuable:

  • Zero downtime DNS/DHCP
    The built-in HA configuration monitors the DNS/DHCP service health using Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol heartbeats and manages a shared Virtual IP between the primary and the secondary servers. It ensures that if the primary DNS/DHCP server fails, the secondary server takes over immediately—no manual intervention, no lease disruption.

  • Purpose-built for DHCPv6 and DHCPv4 (Unicast/Multicast)
    Since both DHCPv6 and DHCPv4 (in unicast/multicast mode) involve clients sending requests directly to a specific server IP or multicast group—unlike broadcast mode, where requests are sent to the entire subnet (255.255.255.255)—DDI Central enables a purpose-built HA setup using a Virtual IP. 
    Only the primary server responds to client requests, while its health is actively monitored by the secondary server to ensure automatic failover when needed—all through a simple and reliable HA mechanism.

  • Synchronized lease state
    DDI Central synchronizes lease databases across primary and secondary DHCP servers, ensuring consistency and accuracy in IP address assignments even during failover.

  • Streamlined setup
    No external load balancers, no scripts, no third-party HA tools. DDI Central delivers a native failover configuration UI, making HA deployment administrator-friendly and infrastructure-light.

  • Smarter monitoring, faster recovery
    Built-in health checks and role state awareness allow the system to automatically detect failures and promote the secondary node—minimizing downtime and preserving service continuity.

  • Fully visible, fully configurable
    Everything is set up and managed directly from DDI Central’s intuitive UI. 

    This is a crucial enhancement for enterprises standardizing on Linux that provides you redundancy, reliability, and peace of mind with a streamlined HA deployment. Because core services like DNS and DHCP shouldn't be a single point of failure—and now, they don’t have to be.

Reverse DNS lookup made easy : Automatic PTR record creation

Managing forward and reverse DNS records manually can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially in large-scale environments. With version 5100, DDI Central now automates the creation of DNS pointer (PTR) records whenever you add an A (IPv4) or AAAA (IPv6) record.

This means that every time you create an A or AAAA record to map a hostname to an IP address, DDI Central 5100 automatically generates the corresponding PTR record—enabling reverse DNS lookups without any additional configuration.

All you need to do is toggle on the “Associate PTR” option during record creation, and the platform takes care of the rest—ensuring that forward and reverse records stay perfectly in sync, reducing administrative overhead and minimizing the risk of DNS inconsistencies.

Forward + reverse DNS lookup configured in one step 

Let’s say you create an A record for a new internal web server:

  • Hostname: web01.internal.example.com

  • IPv4 Address: 192.168.10.25

In DDI Central 5100, with the "Associate PTR" toggle enabled, the platform will:

  • Automatically create the forward mapping:
    web01.internal.example.com → 192.168.10.25

  • And generate the reverse mapping:
    25.10.168.192.in-addr.arpa → web01.internal.example.com

No manual zone configuration is required. There will be no reverse DNS mismatches—just clean, consistent records every time.

Here’s how DDI Central's automatic PTR record creation capabilities helps admins:

  • Eliminates manual PTR entry errors that often cause DNS inconsistencies

  • Keeps forward and reverse zones perfectly in sync, improving DNS hygiene

  • Saves time during zone provisioning and updates

  • Ensures better traceability and network auditing, especially in regulated environments

  • Reduces support overhead caused by misconfigured reverse lookups

  • Ensures accurate reverse lookups for tools like monitoring systems, email servers, and access logs that rely on PTR records


Whether you're troubleshooting, running forensic analysis, or simply ensuring DNS best practices, this feature gives you cleaner, smarter, and more reliable DNS—all automatically. Because in today’s networks, visibility begins with accuracy.

Ready to explore DDI Central 5100?  

DDI 5100 delivers several usability upgrades you’ll love. Here’s our release notes for 5100.

This release is available now. If you’re an existing user, you can directly upgrade now. New to DDI Central? Reach out to our team fora demo ora 30-day free trial.

Stay tuned—more integrations are coming. Because at DDI Central, we believe your IP infrastructure is more than just addresses. It’s your control plane.