Boutique DCIM vs. Big DCIM
By Fred Koh - July 19, 2022If you’re in the market for a data center infrastructure management solution (DCIM), you want to find the best solution you can. You need to buy something that will deliver on its promises, and, when you’re looking at the various features and vendors out there, you might find yourself a bit lost. Before you jump…
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Is Your Fiber Plant “Area 51”?
By Fred Koh - July 12, 2022You want to believe: you know your fiber’s out there…somewhere…but exactly what it’s all doing and where it all is…that’s the mystery! If you’re dealing with a fiber mystery, this blog’s for you! Question: does any of the below sound familiar to you….? When you need to figure out where something goes to in your…
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How’s netTerrain Priced & Licensed?
By Fred Koh - June 14, 2022Are you considering IT infrastructure management software like netTerrain (DCIM, OSP, and Logical)? If so, this article’s meant to help you get a better idea of how netTerrain is priced (you can also watch a video that discusses how netTerrain’s priced, if you prefer). We talk a lot about our products on this website —…
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Rack Diagrams: Why Data Center Teams Rely On Them
By Fred Koh - June 7, 2022As one of our software’s (netTerrain) applications is in data centers (DCIM), we often hear feedback from data center managers using netTerrain DCIM’s rack diagrams: they love them. What are rack diagrams? In a nutshell, rack diagrams are visual depictions of your IT equipment that show where the equipment is placed inside the racks/cabinets. In…
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How OSP Network Software Saves the Day
By Fred Koh - June 6, 2022Do you manage your fiber infrastructure? If you do, here’s a big round of applause to you: working on fiber plant networks isn’t easy! Afterall, you’re managing the day in and day out maintenance, problems that come out of nowhere, fiber cuts or loss, managing fiber capacity, and dealing with the complexities of circuit design…
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3 Network and Data Center Diagramming Success Stories
By Fred Koh - May 18, 2022Considering a software program to document your network, your data centers inventory, and your cabling? Have you outgrown tools like Visio and spreadsheets and you’re ready to find a centralized, visual repository to view, search, report, and find information quickly? If you are, you may be curious as to how other organizations are using netTerrain…
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The 5-Minute Guide to DCIM Software Licensing
By Fred Koh - May 13, 2022If you’re investigating potential Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solutions to transform your data center’s efficiency, you’ll eventually end up at the pricing part of your decision-making process…and you may find yourself scratching your head, thinking, “whaaaat”…pricing for enterprise solutions like DCIM can be far more complex than, say, a pricing for a standard desktop…
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Outdated Network Documentation Solution? How to Replace It
By Fred Koh - May 2, 2022You know what they say about the best laid plans…they don’t always go according to plan! “I’d like to get home by 5PM and catch up on my tv shows, play more with my kids…or maybe I’m so backlogged with my work tickets and need to make progress”…and then boom: a network outage happens just…
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What is Automated Network Mapping?
By Fred Koh - April 20, 2022Automated network mapping is often discussed in forums like Spiceworks and Reddit. Folks ask questions like, “should I get it…?” or “which mapping tool do you recommend?”. If you’re reading this, you may be wondering, before you dive in further as to whether you need it or not: what is automated network mapping, anyways? What…
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The 4-Minute Guide to DCIM’s History
By Fred Koh - April 5, 2022When we worked at netViz back in the early 2000’s, I remember several companies getting started in IT documentation, mainly Aperture and Rackwise, that then started to focus on DCIM. Anyone still remember them? Our team does: afterall, the other founding members and I at Graphical Networks all came from netViz, and we’ve been selling…
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How Do I Switch from Visio Diagrams to Automated Network Documentation?
By Fred Koh - March 28, 2022If 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…
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Introduction: Data Center Capacity Explained
By Fred Koh - March 23, 2022It’s no secret: the demand for more and more data storage is increasing at record speeds today! More storage and higher costs go hand in hand: look at some of the recent headlines in data center news and it’s apparent that data center capacity is both expensive and that the need for it is constantly…
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