If your network is documented in Visio network diagrams, or spreadsheets – or a combination of both – you, or a colleague, have probably invested a great deal of time into that documentation…or, you haven’t and it’s more of an afterthought than documentation that’s truly usable and gives you insights you can act on.
Regardless of how detailed your documentation is (or isn’t), the Visio/spreadsheet method of network documentation requires manual effort on your part — not only to draw your network but to also keep the diagrams you create up-to-date!
Because you’ve invested manual effort into this work, you probably want to retain these diagrams and, yet, you’re thinking it’s time to upgrade to a modern solution that doesn’t force you into manual work and lets you click a button and discover the network (sounds nice, right?)….
Network documentation software like netTerrain, which combines the power of a hand drawing tool with automation of enterprise-grade software, gives you the best of both worlds: detailed, visual web depicted network topology maps and its information….that you can access in just a few clicks.
So, you’re thinking you want to leave sorting through various static diagrams and spreadsheets in the dust and upgrade to software that’s automated and lets you search for anything in the network in seconds. If you have to retain your existing files and bring that into the new solution, you’re probably curious about how big of a pain will making the leap from Visio network diagrams and spreadsheets to a centralized documentation software like netTerrain can be?
There’s an “Easy” Button for That:
Import your existing Visio diagrams and Excel spreadsheets with a button! netTerrain gives you many ways to import your existing data into netTerrain. These include spreadsheets, Visio, Google Earth (KMZ/KML), and an older legacy tool, netViz (disclosure: me and the founding members all came from netViz prior to starting Graphical Networks!)…and yes, there’s an easy button that lets you import your Visio diagrams and spreadsheets.
Click, Connect, Map:
Automatically discover the network! netTerrain has a built-in discovery feature that can go out in your network, scan the network using SNMP, WMI, NMAP, and automatically create network topology maps. These maps can be shared with your unlimited read-only viewers in netTerrain, or can be exported to Visio, PowerPoint, or PDF. This discovery can be scheduled to your cycle, for example, every ten minutes, hour, week, etc.).
Visualize Anything:
Connect to 3rd party apps! If you have other data sources that you use to monitor and manage your network, how hard is it to gather this data into a new system? Many systems, like netTerrain, provide a full Rest API, for you to connect your systems, like ServiceNow, Solarwinds, and Observium. Bring in these data sets for example to gain greater visibility into your network and achieve better ROI on your existing tools.
To sum up, if you want to retain your existing data — but you want to upgrade to a modern and supported solution that eliminates the manual work, software like netTerrain gives you many ways to import your existing data and data sources — plus, you can utilize a network discovery mapping tool to help you migrate from the manual diagram approach to an automated network documentation approach! If you’d like to test-drive netTerrain for free for 14 days click here to get started…and, if you’d like to schedule a demo, click here now.