Logical map in netTerrain

Ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? It stars Bill Murray as a journalist trapped having to repeat the same boring day of his life — Groundhog Day, to be exact — every single day indefinitely. If you manage a network, maybe you can relate. Maybe you deal with your fair share of unnecessary tasks and communications that feel like the ‘same thing, different day’ over and over again.

If you’re a network engineer/manager, here are the symptoms you might be stuck in ‘Groundhog Day’ Mode:

  • Ever feel like a hamster in a wheel: different day, same requests for the same information about the network?
  • You can send information about routing tables and dumping data from the switches, and routers….you can grab all kinds of dumps…but they keep coming back for more.
  • You find yourself troubleshooting the same issues…over and over again.
  • You waste time troubleshooting because you manually entered in something incorrectly.

If this sounds like a day in your life, there’s hope out there. What’s the cure? Stop doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome this time around. Start documenting.

Network documentation saves you from having to troubleshoot the same exact issues over and over again. If you’ve found a solution that works in the past, for example, you can document it. The next time that same issue arises, you can quickly identify past issues and exactly how you resolved them.

Ultimately, a well-documented network saves you from the time and mistakes of manual data entry. Automatic network documentation maps the network for you: you save time and reduce errors.

Stop the repetitive work that’s not doing much good for anyone or anything.

Imagine, for a moment, just how different daily work life might look if you had the following:

  • Rack elevations (complete with the device model and make info/properties)
  • Connections and cabling infrastructure (port-to-port if possible)
  • Topology views, Layer 1 to Layer 3
  • Customizable objects, fields, and links (so that your entire IT infrastructure can be represented, not just routers)
  • Easy access to the documents you need: config files, processes, procedures, vendor information and licenses, firewall rules

With a proper network documentation solution in place, you could have the above and the ability to give different types of users and stakeholders different views of the network on a per-user, granular basis. You could stop that constant stream of information requests in its tracks.

Bottom line? Break out of ‘Groundhog Day’ mode. It’s time to stop wasting time and money on small errors and repetitive work: it’s time to start documenting.

About Jason Sherman

As Graphical Networks’ Sales Engineering and Support Services Manager, Jason Sherman leads the pre and post sales cycle with the entire Graphical Networks software portfolio, and ensures current customers are able to use the software to its fullest potential.