Overview

The Men & Mice Suite consists of several components. Below, you will find a short description on each component and a high-level architectural diagram of the Men & Mice Suite architecture.

Management Console

The Men & Mice Management Console is the application you use to administer your DNS server. The Management Console runs on Windows XP or later.

CLI

The Men & Mice Management Console's Command Line Interface contains various commands to help you manage your zones from the command line.

Web Interface

The Men & Mice Web Interface is a web interface for the Men & Mice Suite. The Men & Mice Web Interface is an AJAX Web Application that can run on top of Microsoft IIS or an Apache web server.

DNS Server Controller

The Men & Mice DNS Server Controller is used to control the DNS server and must be installed on each DNS server machine you want to control. The Men & Mice DNS Server controller reads and writes zone data and option files, and sends commands to the DNS server. The Men & Mice DNS Server Controller listens on TCP port 1337

DHCP Server Controller

The Men & Mice DHCP Server Controller is used to control the DHCP server. For ISC DHCP, a copy should be installed on each DHCP server machine. For MS DHCP, a copy can be installed on each DHCP server machine, or in certain circumstances it can be installed on another server and connect to the DHCP service over the network. In order for this remote DHCP management to work, the DHCP Server Controller must be installed on a Windows server and must run under an account that has privileges to manage the DHCP service over the network. Operating this way, one DHCP Server Controller can manage several different DHCP servers. To manage the DHCP server on a Cisco router, the DHCP Server Controller can be installed on any machine. The DHCP Server Controller listens for connections from Men & Mice Central on TCP port 4151.

Men & Mice Updater

By default the Men & Mice Updater is installed with the DNS and DHCP Server Controllers, and also with Men & Mice Central.  This component enables automatic update of the Controllers installed on the managed servers.  Men & Mice Central connects to the Men & Mice Updater, which listens on TCP port 4603.

Men & Mice Central

Men & Mice Central stores all user specific information as well as centrally stored information. One copy of Men & Mice Central needs to be installed. When a user logs into the system, they start by connecting to Men & Mice Central. Men & Mice Central handles user authentication and contains information about access privileges for the user. If the Men & Mice IP Address Management component is installed, Men & Mice Central is responsible for management and allocation of IP Addresses. Men & Mice Central listens on TCP port 1231.

Men & Mice Suite – High-level Architectural Diagram

All communications between Men & Mice Management Console and the other Men & Mice components are encrypted.

User Interfaces

The Management Console and Command Line Interface connects directly to Men & Mice Central using TCP/IP connecting to through TCP port 1231. The Men & Mice Web Interface talks directly to the Web Server (IIS or Apache) which redirects its request to Men & Mice Central also through TCP port 1231.

Middle Layer

The middle layer is responsible for collecting and synchronizing data and handle requests from different Interfaces. Men & Mice Central has its own database to store all related data. The authoritative data is always the data source itself (i.e., the DNS Server). To retrieve data from the different data sources it uses various methods, as listed above.  It might also communicate to other services in order to get or set information—e.g., Microsoft Active Directory to authenticate users.

Data Layer

The Men & Mice DNS Server Controller communicates with the DNS server using RNDC (BIND) or DNSP/RPC (Windows Server 2008 and above).