If you manage IT infrastructure, it’s easy to think of your facility’s different areas as being substantially separate from one another. Need to manage your data center assets and facilities? There’s DCIM software for that. Managing the network? Well, there’s network documentation software for that, right? Managing the fiber plant? How about using GoogleEarth, spreadsheets, or maybe a GIS solution of some kind…right?
Whoa…that’s a lot of tools all for IT documentation.
Too Many Tools!?
Given that your facility is connected, and your IT networks aren’t solo islands that never connect, do you ever think it’s a little strange that the most common approach to IT documentation is, frankly, stuck in the dark ages. Historically, it made sense as networks of all kinds have grown at different paces.
The business demand on IT resources increased, and greatly matured, over time… it didn’t happen all at once. Maybe your data center became priority number one or your fiber or vice versa. As a result, software vendors tried to come up with tools that could match the current need (demand) and specialized in one area or another.
Fast forward to today, however, and we’ve found that many facilities are finding they need or want just one platform to cover their entire IT documentation. They don’t want to have one system for fiber documentation, one for their data center rack diagrams, and one for their network diagrams.
They’re finding that having disparate systems is causing big headaches…like what?
Let’s see the learning curve in learning how to do and maintain documentation on three different applications, finding information takes a long time (be nice to search for an item once and find it in seconds), how do you know when was the last time it was documented or changed, etc.
…Is There a Better Way?
When we started our software company, Graphical Networks, we saw there was a great need for good network documentation software — so that’s where we focused. Over time, we realized folks needed to document their data centers, too — and so we began specializing in DCIM and data center rack diagrams in addition to network documentation. Then, almost a decade ago, customers approached us because they needed a way to also document their fiber infrastructure — and so we began specializing in fiber documentation, too!
Example: Document Your Fiber Plant with netTerrain
Today, we’re proud to say that our software, netTerrain, can do it all: from documenting and managing your building capacity, from your data center rooms, to your racks, power, servers, ports, cards, fiber strands, to managing office floor space and anywhere else inside and managing your fiber lines and its equipment outside of the building, and for network engineers that need to see automated network maps to help troubleshoot and find issues faster, wherever you have an IT infrastructure, you can document it with netTerrain:
- Document your data center: check out netTerrain DCIM
- Document Your network: check out netTerrain Logical
- Document fiber/outside plant: check out netTerrain OSP
Example: Document Your Data Center with netTerrain
Example: Document Your Network with netTerrain
What if You Only Need to Document the Network (or the Data Center, or Your Fiber?)
Even if you only need to document one area of your IT infrastructure right now — for example, your network — it may make sense to purchase software that lets you do it all or take it step by step. Why? Eventually, you may have a real need for data center documentation or fiber documentation.
If you’ve got all of your network documentation in one tool that doesn’t support other areas of IT documentation, you may be faced with the prospect of transferring everything over into a new tool or having to use two disparate tools that both have a learning curve and don’t offer a lot of overlap that would make your workflow easier. In fact, we’ve had numerous customers who start with one area of their IT infrastructure and eventually end up scaling their license to include another area.
Document everything — from your outside plant to data center rooms, racks, ports, cards, and fiber strands — with netTerrain.
Bottomline? If you’re investing in IT documentation software — whether it’s for documenting the network, the data center, or the fiber plant — consider the big picture. If it’s reasonable to assume that, down the line, you’ll want to have all of your IT documentation under the roof of one modern platform, look into software like netTerrain that can do it all. Don’t get boxed in and be forced to buy one solution for one thing, and then another…and have to do integrations upon integrations to get all of it to work together.
Less is more: get all of your documentation on one platform before it’s too late! Want to try out our software netTerrain? Click here to get a 100% free trial and demo right now.