If you are configuring a dual-stack network for the host, you must set the minimum MTU value for the IPv4 address to 1280; if you do not, the IPv6 address will not be functional.

NIST SP 800 81r3 page with PDF.

The Infoblox STIG documents published by the US Defense Information Systems Agency. There is a DISA STIG for NIOS 8.x - https://www.stigviewer.com/stigs/infoblox_8x_dns

When you use RPZ to download Threat Feeds from a provider (e.g. Infoblox, etc), make sure that at the first RPZ feed in the list is a local feed that lists your critical internal domains and RFC1918 (and other networks that you use), set the action to allow without logging. This will prevent your internal systems from being impacted by erroneous data in the providers feed.

Under Grid Properties > General > Basic > Audit Logging you can set “Brief”, “Detailed”, “WAPI Detailed”. Setting to Brief instead of Detailed can (and has) hampered Infoblox support in establishing exact root cause of issues.

Under Grid Properties > Monitoring > Basic make sure you tick Copy Audit Log Message to Syslog. Because it is syslog that can be copied of to SIEM server, this is how you ensure a longer copy of audit logs.

• DNS - If the Round Trip Time (RTT) between client and DNS server is greater than 200ms, then the user starts to notice.
• DHCP - normally very tolerant of latency between client and DHCP server.
• NTP - normally very tolerant of latency between client and NTP server.

The option “Return Minimal Responses” should generally be disabled for external facing DNS servers.

It has been see that enabling “Return Minimal Responses” can cause issues when Microsoft clients query NIOS which has a forwarder to a Microsoft Active Directory domain controller.

This means it returns

;; ANSWER SECTION:
_mssms_mp_swa._tcp.domain.internal.local. 14400 IN SRV 0 0 80 domaincontrollerhostname.domain.internal.local.

Instead of

;; ANSWER SECTION:
_mssms_mp_swa._tcp.domain.internal.local. 14400 IN SRV 0 0 80 domaincontrollerhostname.domain.internal.local.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
domaincontrollerhostname.domain.internal.local. 1200 IN      A       1.2.3.4
domaincontrollerhostname.domain.internal.local. 1200 IN      AAAA    2002:2002:2002::2002:2002

That extra bit is needed by the Microsoft clients so “Return Minimal Responses” had to be disabled.

• Configuring RPZ Feeds
• Network Discovery
• AWS Route53 Integration
• Cricket's Best Practice DNS
• DFP Best Practice on NIOS

• vNIOS for Hyper-V is not recommended as a Grid Master or Grid Master Candidate. Specifications
  • When running NIOS in MS Hyper-V with dynamic memory allocation enabled, your system might experience high memory usage. To avoid this issue, Infoblox recommends that you disable dynamic memory allocation.
  • For optimal performance, vNIOS for Hyper-V is not recommended as a Grid Master or Grid Master Candidate.
• DNS forwarding proxy is not supported on any appliance that is running on a memory lower than 4 GB. source
• There might be a significant performance impact on your appliance and network during the DNS forwarding proxy installation process depending on the network connectivity between NIOS and BloxOne Threat Defense. Every node will have to install the DNS forwarding proxy before serving DNS recursive queries, which includes the HA nodes. source
• If DHCP scavenging is not enabled, it should be, and it definitely can reduce the lease count. If scavenging is not enabled, leases remain in the database even after they have expired.
• Enable single client lease feature of DHCP.
• Enable the NIOS Object Change Tracking feature to reduce the quantity of data transferred. When you enable this feature, the appliance tracks the changes that are made to NIOS objects and periodically synchronizes changed objects.
• Enable Object Change Tracking (docs). Do this under Grid Properties.
  • The Object Change Tracking feature is optimized to reduce impact on the DDI services and it runs only on the Grid Master. The synchronization process synchronizes 1000 objects at a time with a 2 second pause in between. There might be a slight impact on the Grid Master Candidate as they get updates from the Grid Master. When protocol services are running on the Grid Master Candidate you might encounter a 5% drop in the protocol performance. This feature does not impact the services that are running on the Grid members.

• RPZ Ordering
• Deploying BloxOne Hosts
• Deploying BloxOne Hosts
• Deploying BloxOne Endpoint

NOTE: The following notes do not reflect official Infoblox best practice. These are just notes that I've made along the way.

• BloxOne DNS zone should be assigned to an IPSpace. Failure to do so can result in licence issues as “used IP addresses” may be counted twice.
• OPH should be assigned to an IPSpace. Failure to do so can result in licence issues as “used IP addresses” may be counted twice.
• Consider adding cloudfront.net to the allow list. Cloudfront is a CDN. Unlike other CDN's (e.g. Fastly and Akamai) Cloudfront (used to?) allow uses to visit their URL's directly rather than through the original website using them as a CNAME. This can lead to URL filtering platforms (e.g. SURBL FP) to mark the cloudfront.net sub-domains as phishing, etc.

In accordance with RFC 6303 consider adding the following PTR zones as standard.

• 10.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 16.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 17.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 18.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 19.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 20.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 21.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 22.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 23.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 24.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 25.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 26.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 27.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 28.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 29.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 30.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 31.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 168.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA

(And from here)

• 100.51.198.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 113.0.203.IN-ADDR.ARPA

• 0.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 127.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 254.169.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 2.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 100.51.198.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 113.0.203.IN-ADDR.ARPA
• 255.255.255.255.IN-ADDR.ARPA

• 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.ARPA
• 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.ARPA

• D.F.IP6.ARPA

• 8.E.F.IP6.ARPA
• 9.E.F.IP6.ARPA
• A.E.F.IP6.ARPA
• B.E.F.IP6.ARPA