Re: Network diagram software

[Kevin Day <toasty () dragondata com>]

On Feb 11, 2009, at 7:06 AM, Mathias Wolkert wrote:

> I'd like to know what software people are using to document networks.
> Visio is obvious but feels like a straight jacket to me.
> I liked netviz but it seems owned by CA and unsupported nowadays.
>
> What do you use?
>
> /Tias

Two packages that I'm looking at right now for a project.


RackMonkey http://flux.org.uk/projects/rackmonkey/

Simple, AJAX-ified, looks very easy to use for non-nerds. Keeps track  
of rack space allocations, devices, even does some neat tricks using  
Dell service tags to let you see warranty/config info.


RackTables http://racktables.org/

More advanced, but quite a bit more complex. Keeps track of devices,  
how they're connected, IP allocations, vlans, "virtual servers", etc.  
Some tools to let you automatically populate the database.


Neither appear to do power management, or much in the way of physical  
cable routing. Power is becoming a big thing for everyone - a tool  
that let us track idle/average/max power loads per device, and play  
'what-if' with circuit/rack placement would make my life a lot easier.

Like others posted, one of the big problems is that you can't put  
everything into one visualization. For us, we need physical/L1 (rack  
space planning, power planning, cable routing, asset tracking, etc),  
network/L2 (switches, vlans, mac addresses), IP/L3 (IP management,  
subnets, virtual servers, etc), Application/L4+ (what apps/services  
run on which servers, domain names, etc)

I'm not aware of any one tool that does all of that, but there seems  
to be a lot of appeal in tying all those things together.

-- Kevin