If Your DCIM Needs a User Guide, it’s Flawed
By Jan Durnhofer - June 28, 2021Some folks say, “if a software needs a user guide, it’s already flawed.” While this statement may be extreme, there is a point here. At Graphical Networks, we strive to make software that’s as easy-to-use as possible (so it doesn’t become an obstacle between the user and the task at hand). In this blog and…
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Limited Custom Fields in DCIM Software? Run for the Hills!
By Jan Durnhofer -We’ve said it in the past, we’ll say it now, and we’ll say it again in the future: good DCIM software needs to be flexible. In this blog (and video), we’ll check out some use cases that show why it’s important to have flexibility in creating custom fields as well as how they work in…
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netTerrain 9.0: Mobile App & More
By Jan Durnhofer - March 22, 2021A new year and a new version: welcome to netTerrain 9.0! The advent of 9.0 marks our last single digit major release and the first incarnation of the 9.x series, also called “Europe” (which you’ll notice as soon as you log in or take a look at the guide covers featuring beautiful landscapes from the…
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netTerrain Version 8.6: Enhanced Performance, Customization, Usability
By Jan Durnhofer - September 11, 2020Another year, another step closer to documentation heaven…welcome to netTerrain 8.6! This is the fifth (and last) incarnation of the 8.x series (also called “China” — as you may have seen the pretty guide covers that feature beautiful landscapes from the Asian country as well as in the login pictures). For 8.6, we worked on…
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Enhanced Layer 2 Network Discovery Coming Up!
By Jan Durnhofer - July 10, 2020A key aspect of mapping the network is the ability to automatically discover the entire topology! This is so crucial that, in fact, at least half of the requests we get from our customers involve what we call ‘Layer 2 Discovery’. It’s called Layer 2 (you can click here to read more about it on…
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What’s Your DCIM Roadmap?
By Jan Durnhofer - July 2, 2020Customers and prospects frequently ask us about our roadmap. While it’s a good question, it’s tricky to answer….not because I feel we have a ‘roadmap problem’ at Graphical Networks, but because, if I have to explain our stance and the reasoning behind it, it would lend itself to a long philosophical debate on the nature…
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netTerrain Complaint of the Week: where’s your feature request system?
By Jan Durnhofer - June 30, 2020A customer who uses netTerrain for Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) recently asked us why they couldn’t access some sort of customer-centric feature request database or roadmap tool. It’s a good question (and it’s one that also invites some interesting philosophical debates that are fodder for more than the one heated discussion our team had…
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netTerrain Complaint of the Week: the upgrade patch won’t work!
By Jan Durnhofer - March 27, 2020As you may have seen from one of our newsletters or announcements, we just released version 8.5 of netTerrain . Since most of our customers have an on-premise installation, they’re pointed to download the new version of the software (I’m referring to customers that already use netTerrain and therefore have plenty of data related to…
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netTerrain 8.5: Fresh Look, New Features
By Jan Durnhofer - March 23, 2020This is the fourth, and perhaps the last, incarnation of the 8.x series. This time around, our engineering team worked on close to 300 tickets. Yes, 300! There were the usual small fixes and improvements, and also many tickets related to the Collector and the API, but, drum roll please: 8.5 also saw some major…
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netTerrain Settings: Fiber and Outside Plant Diagram Tuning
By Jan Durnhofer - March 17, 2020In our first blog in this series on settings for our outside plant software, we explained the need for settings in the context of fine tuning you Data Center, Network Documentation or Outside Plant project and we looked into a specific repository of parameters called Settings.xml. In our second blog in this series we looked…
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Press Button, Picture Network, Go to Sleep…?
By Jan Durnhofer - March 13, 2020If you work in IT, and you’ve spent more than 5 minutes trying to troubleshoot the network, you probably know the usual deal with network documentation . It’s very important and at the same time… it’s usually the last thing people update. In ‘Steady State’ mode, aka when no alarms are going off, you run…
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netTerrain Settings: Fine-tune netTerrain Notifications & Visualization Features
By Jan Durnhofer - March 5, 2020In the first blog in this series, we explained the need for settings in the context of fine tuning you Data Center, Network Documentation or Outside Plant project and we looked into a specific repository of parameters called Settings.xml. In this second blog, we will continue looking into specific settings that can help you fine…
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