Microsoft Windows Server IPAM vs OpenNetAdmin

Microsoft Windows Server IPAM is an integrated suite for planning, deploying, managing, and monitoring IP infrastructure from a central interface. It automatically discovers IP infrastructure and DNS servers, manages DHCP scopes and failover, and organizes IP address blocks and ranges. Its DNS functions collect zone and resource-record data and allow administrators to create, edit, or delete records through the console. IPAM logs DNS configuration changes made there and includes built-in role-based access-control roles and access scopes. Microsoft describes installing it on a dedicated member server with WID or SQL Server storage. GPO-based provisioning supports DHCP, DNS, and domain-controller discovery. DNS collection works only with domain-joined Microsoft DNS servers; third-party and non-domain-joined DNS servers are unsupported. Microsoft lists applicability to Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025, plus Azure Local 2311.2 and later. Windows Server 2025 Standard is $1,176, paid once; Datacenter is $6,771, paid once.

OpenNetAdmin is a free, open-source, self-hosted IP address management system for tracking network attributes and supporting configuration work. Its inventory can include DNS names, IP addresses, subnets, MAC addresses, IPv6 addresses, VLANs, DHCP pools, NAT, and custom attributes. Administrators can manage records through an AJAX-enabled web interface or use the command-line interface for scripting and bulk work. The project describes the inventory as manually maintained and authoritative, with discovery tools helping to populate and audit it. Templates and backend processes can generate DNS, DHCP, and router configurations, including for distributed servers. Other capabilities include overlapping DNS views, plugins, LDAP and local authentication, and configuration archives with syntax-highlighted comparisons. BIND-DLZ can query the ONA database directly, and host actions can link to applications such as Splunk, Nagios, Cacti, and Base. The core is released under GPLv2.0, though some add-ons may have separate licenses. The features page says multiple database backends are possible, but only MySQL is tested.