Change Management Crucial in DCIM & Network Mapping Success
By Fred Koh - August 29, 2018Have you been using spreadsheets and Visio diagrams to document your data center and networks? Are you considering upgrading to DCIM or an automated network diagramming solution? I’ve consulted on numerous project approvals and over the years, I’ve found that two key questions pop up time and time again: How, exactly, will you maintain the…
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Network Visibility for IoT Devices
By Fred Koh - August 27, 2018By now, we’ve all heard about the Internet of Things (IoT) via various news articles, social media posts, and maybe even stock analysts. How you define IoT depends upon what you’re doing: for some, it’s self-driving vehicles, sensor networks for monitoring, ‘smart cities’, or walking into an Amazon grocery store and picking up lunch without…
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How DCIM Can Lower PUE
By Fred Koh - August 17, 2018Data center power and cooling costs are expensive…and as infrastructures continue to expand, these costs are only going up. Because of solutions such as DCIM software, costs don’t have to keep skyrocketing. DCIM can give insights as to where power is being drawn by servers that aren’t performing any functions, for example, or true power…
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View Your Entire Cloud & Network Infrastructure
By Fred Koh - August 16, 2018The digital transformation movement is leaving no prisoners behind in its wake: infrastructure-as-a-service (the Cloud) — for example — has become immensely popular as it frees up IT and development time and the costs to maintain a data center. A 2016 IDG survey returned staggering results: 47% of companies have transitioned their messages to the…
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How Network Diagrams Help You with Compliance & Regulations
By Fred Koh - August 15, 2018Recently, I wrote a blog entitled ‘Network Documentation: Is It Really a Priority?’: in this blog, I discussed the importance of network diagrams and documentation in capacity planning, reducing mean-time-to-repair, lowering expenditures, cutting down on IT clutter, and more. One significant issue I didn’t discuss in that blog is this: regulatory compliance. Graphical Networks, my…
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Network Documentation: Is It Really a Priority?
By Fred Koh - August 10, 2018Let’s face it: we all say “network documentation is important”… but for some reason it is never truly considered urgent or a higher priority. I hear it all the time. Yet, when the ‘you know what’ hits the fan, we all go desperately scrambling for those uninspired network documents…only to find them outdated and basically…
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Untangle Your Cable Management Mess
By Fred Koh -Hey, I know what would be really fun to try at work today: let’s all spend hours trying to find a needle in a haystack! When you can’t see where your cabling is, and what exactly you have, you end up wasting countless hours trying to find cables you didn’t even know you have (or…
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Lower Data Center Power Costs & Control Unnecessary Spending
By Fred Koh - August 9, 2018The issue of zombie servers remains a major hurdle for data centers today. According to a Stanford University study, a staggering 1 in 3 servers is – for all intents and purposes – a zombie: it’s drawing power but not performing any meaningful functions. Why do I care about this costs problem haunting modern data…
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How to Centralize Your IT Infrastructure Views
By Fred Koh - August 8, 2018Here’s a common scenario you may find yourself in or are currently in: you’ve just started working for a company with a sizeable network….and the main person (who has all the knowledge) just left the company for good. The big ticket questions are: “What do we have on our network? Are there routers that are…
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Cloud vs. On-Premise Software for Managing the Network
By Fred Koh -2018 is the year of the Cloud (okay, maybe someone said that about 2017, and maybe they’ll say that about 2019, too). Right now, there is a lot of discussion around what’s better in software today: a Cloud or on-premise solution? There’s no doubt that the Cloud is trending upward. A 2017 tech forecast survey…
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Graphical Networks Announces Partnership with Siemon
By Fred Koh - July 11, 2018After a search for the right data center hardware manufacturer with whom to partner, Graphical Networks is pleased to announce it has partnered with Siemon, a leading network infrastructure specialist. This partnership will afford Siemon’s customers the ability to manage, control, and document the data center. As an industry leader in network infrastructure, Siemon specializes…
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What is DCIM? DCIM Software 101
By Fred Koh - June 15, 2018DCIM, which stands for Data Center Infrastructure Management, gives data center managers a central repository from which they can manage their data centers’ assets, space, power, cabling, cooling, and downtime. DCIM makes managing the ever-expanding ecosystems in data centers less daunting: with DCIM software, cable and circuit outages can be traced and resolved, new equipment…
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