Where’s the Deployment Guide?
By Jan Durnhofer - March 3, 2020This week we opened a very interesting email from a potential customer who wanted to check out netTerrain’s deployment guide (they’re seriously considering deploying netTerrain DCIM for their Data Center Infrastructure Management needs). After providing this prospect with the installation guide, he came back requesting more documentation that would specifically address firewall rules. I thought…
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netTerrain Settings: Secrets for Fine-tuning Your DCIM, OSP, and Network Diagrams
By Jan Durnhofer - February 20, 2020One of our mantras as a software company is to try to deliver a product that you can “manage by exception”. This means that, ideally, the software should already be configured in such a way that it accommodates your most likely needs. Only in case of an exception, in which some setting needs to be…
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netTerrain Complaint of the Week: the previewer isn’t smooth enough!
By Jan Durnhofer - February 19, 2020Welcome back to our complaint-of-the-week series. After a rather long hiatus, we’re back again with this series dedicated to unearthing some of the weaknesses you may come across while using netTerrain. Exposing weaknesses…from a software vendor? Yep: as good software is an iterative process of improvement, we have no problem exposing some of the things…
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Zoom & Pan: a Gazillion Ways to Do It, but Stick to the Shortcuts!
By Jan Durnhofer - February 15, 2020As you may know, we usually poke fun at ourselves by writing about complaints customers have in our complaint of the week series that focuses on what our users don’t love about our software for network mapping, data center management, and outside plant. Today, however, I’m turning the tables a bit: I’m putting you, our…
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Server Sizing for DCIM and OSP Deployments
By Jan Durnhofer - February 4, 2020Unless a customer purchases a cloud subscription of netTerrain (in which case we provide the server), we usually get a request for help with server sizing during the deployment phase of a DCIM or OSP implementation. This is expected, as the gatekeepers of the IT world have to install the software and they need to…
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Graphical Networks 2019: Year in Review
By Jan Durnhofer - January 31, 2020The holidays are over and now is the time of the new year when I usually get ready to beat my chest a little bit bragging about the previous year’s results. This year is no different: 2019 was very kind to us (in virtually every aspect and statistic). 2019 at a glance: ● …
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Complaint of the Week: headers and footers giving me trouble!
By Jan Durnhofer - January 7, 2020Another week, another complaint here at GN… If you are new to this blog series, we like to poke holes at all things netTerrain, because, why not? Our customers love the tool, from its DCIM capabilities, network mapping and cable management features, to fiber and outside plant, but it ain’t perfect and showing our weaknesses…
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SNMP discovery vs. Network connectors – which is better?
By Jan Durnhofer - November 18, 2019As netTerrain (for DCIM, Network Mapping, OSP software) offers both options, I get asked this question often: “what should I use? netTerrain’s native SNMP discovery or some connector to an existing system?” And the answer, as you may expect, is “…it depends.” SNMP discovery: “the magic button” netTerrain’s SNMP discovery is a nice feature. You…
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GDPR Compliance? How netTerrain Helps
By Jan Durnhofer - November 15, 2019Recently, a customer asked us about the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the context of his netTerrain documentation. Is netTerrain compliant, and can netTerrain help European Union (EU) organizations get/stay compliant? GDPR and Compliance GDPR is a new regulation that, among other things, expects an organization to meet certain standards for your network…
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DCIM software selection: the don’t’s and don’t’s
By Jan Durnhofer - November 12, 2019I must say that we are quite proud of our customers as they really are a smart bunch. Now, I’m not just saying this just because they happened to choose netTerrain for their Data Center Infrastructure monitoring. That is far too easy for me to say being a (biased)vendor. I truly think our customers are…
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Do I really need Outside Plant (OSP) software?
By Jan Durnhofer - November 8, 2019Our OSP software module, netTerrain OSP, seems to pop-up in discussions with our current netTerrain users quite a bit lately, maybe because it is still relatively new (it is only 4 or 5 years old versus netTerrain’s network and DCIM features, which have been around for over a decade now). Because we’ve been fielding quite…
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netTerrain 8.2: Security, Search, Usability
By Jan Durnhofer - October 23, 2019Because we like to stay on the move here at Graphical Networks, we keep improving netTerrain. 8.2 is the third incarnation of the 8.x series (also called “China”, as you may have seen from the pretty guide covers featuring beautiful landscapes from the Asian country). This time around, our engineering team worked on 35 tickets:…
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