Hello I'm Pat Killianey with Audinate. In this video, we'll take a quick tour of Dante Domain Manager.
Before we start, I'll point out that this video assumes you are familiar with Dante.
If you're not, go watch a video series we have called "Getting Started with Dante".
That will give you the foundational building blocks to help you better understand what we'll show you here.
By this point, you're probably aware of Dante's high performance and wide product selection.
Dante has inspired our industry to make the move to audio networks, saving money and increasing flexibility.
Just as important, I believe Dante's unprecedented ease of use has been key
to its success -- driving it to become the de facto standard in the audiovisual world.
Now, at Audinate we have not been resting on our laurels.
We have continued developing features that IT and AV alike have been asking for.
Dante Domain Manager provides improved control, reach, security and tracking
that are helpful in any installation from modest to massive.
So let's take it for a spin, and I think you'll find that
Dante Domain Manager makes your network easier to use and more flexible than ever before.
Now, in getting to know Dante Domain Manager, the first thing to understand is, "What is a domain?"
Well, a domain is just a grouping of devices.
Think of your computer desktop. You can take a whole mess of documents and organize them into folders.
Then, when you want to work on a document, you go to your Documents folder.
When you want to see your photos, you go to your Photos folder.
With Dante Domain Manager, the idea is similar. You can organize your Dante devices into domains.
Then, you can open a group of devices that you want to work with and that's all you see.
As we show you this, you are probably beginning to think about the functional divisions in your own network.
And as you do, you are beginning to imagine domains.
That's how simple and intuitive this is.
If I had a Dante network with a few systems linked together, I'd see all the devices in one list.
But with Dante Domain Manager, we can organize our devices into domains.
When we're working in one domain, we'll only see the devices in that domain.
And we can easily shift from one domain to another as the need arises.
Here's how Dante Domain Manager does this.
We start with a traditional network - all devices exposed at once.
Dante Domain Manager is a server on your network - you access it with a standard web browser.
It shows a grouping labelled "unmanaged." None of these devices have been assigned to a domain yet.
In fact, I need to make some domains. So, I'll go to the domains tab and click "Add a Domain."
I give it a name. Then, I'll repeat the process for the other two domains.
Now if I go to my device list, below my unmanaged device grouping,
I'll see the three domains we just made.
The organization is structurally very similar to folder views in Mac OS or Windows.
To enroll devices in a domain, I just select them and drag them to the target domain.
Dante Domain Manager automatically makes all the appropriate settings.
If I look in the device list now, I'll see these three devices in the Auditorium.
I'll fast forward as I move all the other devices into domains.
I think the point to notice is that we aren't changing any network settings, here.
Dante Domain Manager handles it all for us.
Now that we've enrolled our devices into domains, let's look in Dante Controller once again.
We can see our devices have been moved out of the unmanaged space, and we see our three domains.
In the Auditorium, I see the devices for that space.
Here are the devices for the Background Music system,
and here are the devices for the Meeting Spaces.
So, the domain concept is fairly simple -
we're allowing you to take your devices and organize them into functional groups.
Once you've done that, there may come a time when you want to move a device from one domain to another.
When that arises, it is as simple as drag and drop.
Here is a laptop I have in the meeting space. Let's suppose I need it in the Auditorium to record an event.
In Dante Domain Manager, I just drag it from the Meeting Space domain to the Auditorium domain.
In Dante Controller you'll see the laptop vanish from one domain and appear in the other.
So working with domains is a simple operation that anyone can do without IT support.
There are no network settings to change - you just drag and drop.
Now, once you've organized your devices into domains, there may come times when you want
to share audio from one domain to the next. Dante Domain Manager cleans this up as well.
If you notice, Dante Controller is showing us a stream in green.
That's your indication that this is being shared from another domain.
In this instance, we've provided the Background Music and Paging feed to the Auditorium
so they can pump it through their PA before and after an event.
Likewise, we're providing the mix from the Auditorium to the Background Music system
so that it can be fed into lobbies and overflow rooms.
Now, notice when we share a stream from one domain to another,
Dante Domain Manager does not require us to expose the entire device.
This feed to the Background Music system shows two channels,
but it is coming from a mixer with a Dante interface that is 64 channels wide.
We've only exposed the channels they needed and we clearly labeled the stream with its purpose.
This simplified view helps people find what they're looking for faster
and it reduces the likelihood of mistakes.
Another nice feature of Dante Domain Manager is the ability to cross a Layer 3 network.
That is the ability to break the limitation of a single subnet.
And once again, Dante Domain Manager does this quite transparently - there's no need to get IT involved.
For the non IT folks, let's first explain the structure and the challenge of a Layer 3 network,
and then we'll show you how Dante Domain Manager does its magic.
Even for a modest sized organization, an IT department will segment the network using VLANs.
This could be done for a number of reasons,
from security, simplicity of management or bandwidth efficiency.
The VLANs are then joined with routers, allowing devices to link together again.
The VLAN is a Layer 2 function. The router is really operating at Layer 3.
When we talk about getting across a Layer 3 network, we're talking about getting across the router.
The challenge here is that media networks often rely on multiple traffic types for
clock synchronization, discovery and audio-video transport.
Multicast, for instance, does not cross a router. It is restricted to the Layer 2 environment.
So, if I wanted to get audio or video from one VLAN to another,
I'd have to address this challenge.
It would be easy to look at this and say, "Ah, the Layer 3 network is the problem!"
If that's your mentality, you might make one sprawling VLAN across the entire property.
Or, you might get into complex switch configuration,
punching holes in the walls of the VLAN, manually routing every multicast stream you need.
Neither solution is ideal.
At Audinate, we felt blaming the Layer 3 network was sort of like
holding a round peg and blaming the square hole. Maybe what you need is a square peg in your toolkit.
So, Audinate created solutions that naturally move through a Layer 3 space.
No network modification needed.
So now we have a set of tools optimized for Layer 2 in a Layer 2 environment,
and we have a set of tools for Layer 3 when we need to cross a router.
And the choice is made automatically for you - that's the power of Dante Domain Manager.
Let me show you what I mean.
We've taken our three domain system, and this time
Kathryn has been kind enough to break this up so devices are in different subnets.
In Dante Controller, I can see the Meeting Spaces are in the 192.168.0.x subnet.
In list view, Dante Controller will organize devices by subnet for reference.
So the Meeting Spaces are in the dot-0 subnet,
the Auditorium is in the dot-1 subnet,
and the Background Music system spans the dot-2 and dot-3 subnets (because devices are located in different spaces around the property).
The first thing to note: the divisions of your Dante domains do not have to agree with the divisions of your VLANs or broadcast domains.
In practice, there's probably some agreement, but it is not a requirement.
Next, let me show you that the process of patching is the same whether you are staying within the Layer 2 space or if you are crossing a router.
In the Background Music system, these amplifiers are in a different subnet than the rest of the system.
So, if I go to the routing page, I can make subscriptions within the Layer 2 space in the traditional way.
And down here I'll make patches across the router into a different subnet and it works the same.
The Dante system is discovering devices, clocking itself and patching across the Layer 3 space with no modification to the network.
So far, we've seen Dante Domain Manager allows us to organize our devices into domains,
making it easier to work on a functional group on the network.
Once divided into domains, we can still share audio from one domain to the other.
In fact, we don't have to share the entire device - we can just provide specific streams.
And, Dante domains can span the Layer 3 space.
The next feature I'd like to show you is user accounts.
Without Dante Domain Manager, anyone can access all of your devices on the network.
This might be fine for personal systems or temporary setups,
but increasingly customers are wanting to secure their systems.
Sometimes operators have fears of sabotage, privacy or content control.
Others are more concerned about well-intentioned, inexperienced users "trying to help" -
maybe a volunteer, freelancer or a new hire.
Adding Dante Domain Manager brings a level of security by controlling access to the network,
whereby we can keep nefarious actors out and keep the new user in the right areas of the network.
When I showed you the process of establishing domains,
I already had Dante Controller logged into Dante Domain Manager. It's a simple process.
Here's Dante Controller.
To log into Dante Domain Manager, I click the Domain button in the tool bar.
I'll type my username and password, and bingo - we can see the domains just as we showed you before.
Dante Domain Manager isn't manipulating the audio video streams themselves,
so you don't have to worry about the server becoming overloaded with data.
Dante Domain Manager is just checking your ID,
granting you access to the parts of the network you're authorized for...
and no more.
So far I've logged in as the administrator - an account that has access to everything.
We can also create users that only have access to certain domains,
and with limited authority in those domains.
Dante Domain Manager does this by establishing roles. Roles establish a list of capabilities.
Maybe one role allows full access, another only has access to patching and a third can view only.
View-only access is quite helpful.
Technicians would be able to view source devices that are feeding them from another domain
and allay any fears that a problem might exist over there.
Or, it could allow technicians to help troubleshooting in other areas without giving them the keys to the kingdom.
Each user can have a different role in each domain.
For example, a technical director might have full access for everything.
An audio engineer for the auditorium could have
fairly full access in their area, but reduced roles in other spaces.
Meanwhile, a volunteer might only receive basic access to the domain they're working in
with no visibility of anything else.
Here it is in action.
I'll log out of my administrator account and log back in as the audio engineer.
This account has fairly full authority within the Auditorium.
As we move to the Background Music system and try to route there, the system won't let me do it.
I've prevented the person from doing anything, there.
Finally I'll go in as the volunteer. You'll see this account only has access to one domain - the rest remain hidden.
Now, let's suppose your organization has a single sign-on policy -
something where a single username and password grants you access to multiple network resources.
Dante Domain Manager can integrate with an LDAP server, where the usernames and passwords are stored.
Then, as your security policy requires employees to change their passwords periodically,
Dante Domain Manager remains in sync automatically.
That's a tremendous timesaver.
Of course, once we have a server linked to all the devices on the network,
Dante Domain Manager can provide another valuable service: we can monitor the devices on the network.
This is incredibly valuable on systems that are mission-critical, large or spread out across a campus.
Dante Domain Manager can watch all of your devices for you. If it sees a problem it will notify you.
You can then proactively solve the problem,
rather than waiting for somebody to make a phone call and fixing it while they watch.
Most of the time, things will be working as you've expected
and you can have confidence when you see a happy dashboard.
If there is a problem, you'll be alerted the moment the problem is encountered.
Once somebody fixes the issue, you'll see the dashboard return to normal.
Now, Dante Domain Manager doesn't just do a ping test to tell if devices are online.
Because it uses the Dante API,
we can tell you something about the problem before you travel out there.
With the information in Dante Domain Manager, you can be confident you are sending
the right person, with the right tools, the first time, probably before anybody else even notices an issue.
And if your organization has a larger network health monitoring solution,
Dante Domain Manager can provide alerts using SNMP.
So, your technicians can still monitor the entire solution from a single pane of glass.
Now, once we've captured all this information, we can also store it in a log.
It not only stores the alerts with timestamps of when problems are noticed and when they are solved,
but it also stores every action taken by a user.
So if you need to troubleshoot something, you have a wealth of data to forensically determine what happened.
To make the log easier to work with, Dante Domain Manager offers a search tool
allowing you to drill down based on multiple criteria to get just the information you're looking for.
So, Dante Domain Manager is incredibly valuable at every phase from commissioning a system through its daily use.
Having objective, quantifiable troubleshooting information is a tremendous time saver.
So, the base features of Dante Domain Manager really come down to five things:
Organize, Route, Authorize, Monitor and Log.
You can organize your devices into domains, simplifying your views as you work in different parts of the system.
Route audio in a layer three space - seamlessly.
We've developed the tools to naturally cross a router so you don't have to modify your network.
Authorize users to access the network.
By using roles - which are lists of permissions -
you can assign different levels of access to different users and keep unauthorized people off of your system.
Monitor the health of your network proactively.
More than just a ping test, Dante Domain Manager gives you insights into the operational status of your devices,
making sure they're operating as you expect.
And of course, you can log the usage and status information so you can troubleshoot objectively.
Because Dante Domain Manager is going to collect so much information,
it provides search tools for the log with multiple criteria so you can get useful reports.
These are the core features of Dante Domain Manager that apply to a variety of audio-video applications.
To learn more or to give it a spin, feel free to contact Audinate
or your local Dante Domain Manager reseller.
Thank you for joining us and we'll talk to you then.