Sustainable networking

Micetro 10.0, formerly known as the Men&Mice Suite, comes revamped with the company's new branding and is positioned to support its reforged vision. Men&Mice is focused on creating a strong and unified user experience. Renaming and rebranding the product is an essential step in achieving this goal. 

"Micetro 10.0 is a big step on our way to becoming the world leader in sustainable networking," says Magnus Bjornsson, Men&Mice CEO. "We took time last year to refocus and streamline the vision for the product as well as the company. Much the same way we help our customers optimise their DDI environments."  

"Giving the product a new name and infusing the interface with our new brand identity is the manifestation of our commitment to a singular vision for Men&Mice," explains Katrin Gudjonsdottir, VP of Marketing at Men&Mice. “It creates consistency for the user, strengthens our mission to provide a 'single pane of glass' orchestration paradigm, and reinforces the core values the new brand is meant to communicate." 

Micetro 10.0 feature highlights include:

Extended enterprise DHCP support 

Micetro 10.0 supports the latest version of ISC's modern DHCP server software Kea, including its enterprise-grade high availability configuration to diversify and strengthen network resilience. 

"Updating our support for the latest version of Kea unlocks cutting-edge features for customers and realigns the product vision to prepare the way for additional functionality that a modern enterprise network might require," says Sigfus Magnusson, Men&Mice CTO. "It's a defining step towards unlocking even more opportunities for the product, and is an immensely valuable way for customers to future-proof their core network infrastructure." 

Kea's enhanced high availability functionality extends Micetro's existing redundancy features. With strong failover support for the server component, the MS SQL and PostgreSQL database backends, and (through xDNS Redundancy) the DNS infrastructure, Micetro already boasted exceptional fault-tolerance; now organisations in need of overlapping redundancy can cover their entire DDI infrastructure. Moreover, the benefits of high availability come at no cost to the flexibility and agility of Micetro in providing backend-agnostic DDI orchestration for highly diverse environments. 

New automation paths through Terraform and Ansible  

Micetro 10.0 includes plugins to integrate DDI workflows into Terraform and Ansible, two modern automation platforms that deliver Infrastructure-as-Code and Network-as-Code functionality many businesses are already using.  

"The ability to plug Micetro into Ansible and Terraform simplifies operations for companies that are already utilising DevOps workflows. Making DDI compatible with these platforms offer further options for them," says Sigfus. "And even if they're not there yet, we help keep their options for automation open, in line with Men&Mice's vision for sustainable networking."  

Men&Mice believes that the fewer tools a company needs to maintain, the more sustainable its operations will become. Reusing proven workflows and internal expertise ultimately lowers OPEX. Extending these benefits to DDI through Micetro delivers better ROI for networking components, whether already existing or newly acquired. 

PostgreSQL support  

Micetro 10.0 is delivering official support for the PostgreSQL database, as well as high availability features to maintain the network environment's fault tolerance. 

"Many enterprise environments, including some of the largest brands in the world, are powered by and utilising open-source technologies. It stands to reason that such environments would use PSQL as a resilient, Linux-based database backend," Sigfus explains. "Supporting PostgreSQL in Micetro means adapting to the naturally occurring diversity in technology, and strengthens our vision for backend-agnostic network orchestration." 

Support for PostgreSQL, along with the existing support for Microsoft SQL Server, delivers more options for businesses to diversify their network infrastructure and create cross-platform redundancies, thereby strengthening network resilience.  

Further UI/UX improvements  

DNS data bulk operations allow Men&Mice customers to take advantage of Micetro's flexibility, streamlining migration between platforms or environments or even deploying new infrastructure through bulk DNS changes.   

Accessibility improvements: Micetro 10.0 conforms to the WCAG Accessibility standard, enhancing support for screen readers and accommodating colorblind users.  

Various interface updates: Men&Mice continues to refine the Micetro user interface to deliver an ever-better user experience. Micetro 10.0 contains a reimagined and simplified server management interface for DNS and DHCP servers to further streamline DDI infrastructure management.