A Crash Course in DCIM Software
By Hannah Ash - July 16, 2018DCIM: what is it, where did it come from, and what can you do with it? In this ‘crash course in DCIM’, we’ll look at the history of DCIM, what managers used before the software, if DCIM is delivering on its promises, and what, exactly, you can do with it. In the Beginning: Early Data…
Learn MoreThe OSI Model: Introduction
By Hannah Ash - July 13, 2018When it comes to things to be excited about in this world, learning about the Open Systems Interconnection Model (OSI) probably ranks somewhere between Tacos Tuesday (very exciting) and yeah getting a tooth pulled (very painful). If you’re reading this, you’re probably not getting a tooth pulled — so hey: life is looking up for…
Learn MoreGraphical Networks Announces Partnership with Siemon
By Fred Koh - July 11, 2018After a search for the right data center hardware manufacturer with whom to partner, Graphical Networks is pleased to announce it has partnered with Siemon, a leading network infrastructure specialist. This partnership will afford Siemon’s customers the ability to manage, control, and document the data center. As an industry leader in network infrastructure, Siemon specializes…
Learn MoreWhat is a Network Diagram?
By Jason Sherman - June 29, 2018As a software vendor specializing in IT documentation, we get a decent amount of website visitors who find our site while searching for specific explanations of what, exactly, network diagrams are…so we figured: why not write about them in-depth… Learn the in’s and out’s of network diagrams: what they are, how they’re used, how to…
Learn MoreWebinar Registration: Manage Your Inside & Outside Plant
By Hannah Ash - June 25, 2018To accomodate a variety of different time zones and schedules, we are offering this webinar at three different times. Choose the time that works the best for you! Manage Your Inside & Outside Plant Webinar – First Session: Time Zone: 10 AM Sydney 6/29 5 PM Los Angeles 6/28 8 PM New York City 6/28…
Learn MoreDashboards for DCIM, Outside Plant, and Network Mapping Software
By Jan Durnhofer -netTerrain Dashboards (also called reports) are collections of gadgets showing aggregated data from the netTerrain database. These dashboards are accessed from the netTerrain project with a simple click (as we will see below). Whether it’s for DCIM, network mapping and documentation, or outside plant dashboards offer a very powerful visual way of aggregating and displaying…
Learn MoreWhat is DCIM? DCIM Software 101
By Fred Koh - June 15, 2018DCIM, which stands for Data Center Infrastructure Management, gives data center managers a central repository from which they can manage their data centers’ assets, space, power, cabling, cooling, and downtime. DCIM makes managing the ever-expanding ecosystems in data centers less daunting: with DCIM software, cable and circuit outages can be traced and resolved, new equipment…
Learn MoreHow To: Network Diagrams with Visio & Spreadsheets
By Jason Sherman - June 12, 2018If you’re a network engineer trying to manage the network — without automated network diagramming software — let me tip my hat to you: you’re probably better qualified than I am to write the introduction to this blog. Network engineers everywhere know, all too well, the pain of troubleshooting, fixing network outages and issues when…
Learn MoreManage Your Outside Plant with Dynamic Maps: Importing KML / KMZ maps
By Jan Durnhofer - June 8, 2018In this blog, the 5th installment to our series on managing your outside plant with dynamic maps, we’ll show how you can bring existing outside plant data into netTerrain. If you already have outside plant data in Google Earth (or another tool that supports exports to KML or KMZ formats), you can leverage this data…
Learn MoreAutomagic Calculations for DCIM, OSP, and Network Mapping
By Jan Durnhofer - June 7, 2018In this blog on automatic calculations (using our DCIM, outside plant, and network diagramming software), we’ll review what we call ‘expressions’ in netTerrain. Expressions are functions you can create in netTerrain using transact SQL to compute or aggregate any sort of scale or value — and retrieve it in a property. You may want to…
Learn MoreThe Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network: What Can Be Documented?
By Jason Sherman - June 5, 2018Now that you’ve identified what it is that you actually need to document, let’s dive into the details….aka what does that look like in your brain? Imagine you have a crystal ball and look into the future: what does your documentation look like. By ‘future’ I mean that you should set a realistic timeline —…
Learn MoreManage Your Outside Plant: Tracing Circuits
By Jan Durnhofer - June 4, 2018In this 4th segment (and video) of our series on managing your outside plant with dynamic maps, you will learn to trace a cable in our outside plant software netTerrain. In the previous segments in this OSP series, you learned how to: create a map in netTerrain OSP software, how to add objects to it…
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