Best Practices for Network Documentation (They’re Not What You Think)
By Jason Sherman - November 29, 2017I’ve been reading up on what the Internet says about ‘best practices for network documentation’. There’s a decent of material out there and, honestly, many of the articles I’ve read raise good points. That being said, I bring a slightly different perspective to what I consider ‘best practices’ for good network documentation. There are hundreds…
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Self-Help for Network Engineers Stuck in ‘Groundhog Day’ Mode
By Jason Sherman - November 21, 2017Ever 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…
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The #1 Thing You Really Need for Network Documentation
By Jason Sherman - November 18, 2017Top ten things you need to do in order to get your networks documented….I’ve seen the lists around the web. They cover the must-do’s and the nice-to-have’s: where do you start documenting. what data do you need to collect, which tools do you need? There’s one thing, however, that all of these lists are missing…and…
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Stop Wasting Money on Data Center Power
By Jason Sherman - November 8, 2017Federal government data centers are now required to install DCIM and achieve a power usage effectiveness rate (PUE) of 1.5 or lower thanks to the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI). Why? What’s the push behind this? Data centers use a whole bunch of power (we know, we know: this isn’t a news flash to you)….
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How to Trace an IT Outage (Even When Your Cabling is Spaghetti)
By Jason Sherman - October 30, 2017Knowing what’s connected to what: it’s one of the primary reasons we document the network. But this knowledge can’t just exist in a vacuum…so what’s the point of knowing what and where your connections are? Let’s not beat around the bush: cabling has a tendency to become ‘spaghetti’ fast, especially as your infrastructure grows. Even…
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Documenting with Visio or Excel Driving You Crazy?
By Jason Sherman - October 24, 2017Do you use Visio or Excel to document the network? If you do, you’re not alone: they are the number one and number two top tools for network documentation. If You’re Documenting with Visio… Truth be told, Visio isn’t meant for network documentation. Visio network diagrams cause three major headaches: no easy way to keep…
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DCIM Vendor Taking Too Long to Model a Device? Read This.
By Jan Durnhofer - October 12, 2017Rod Stewart once famously penned, “time is a thief”; Tom Petty (RIP) proclaimed, “the waiting is the hardest part.” If you’re a DCIM user who’s been kept on hold by your DCIM vendor when you just need a new device type modeled (a new make/model that isn’t already in your catalog), you can probably relate…
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If You Can’t Answer These Questions, Your Network Isn’t Secure
By Jason Sherman - October 6, 2017Coming soon to a movie theatre near you: NETWORK SECURITY….THE MOVIE. It’s going to be a real blockbuster: full of action, thrills, daredevil maneuvers by network engineers who try to save everything at the last minute, and, of course, hackers. Ok. Maybe we’ll have to wait a bit on the movie, but who needs the…
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Lifehack: Get Your Network Reporting Done (Like a Boss)
By Jason Sherman - October 3, 2017“Ummm…yeah….if you could go ahead and give me this information in that format…that’d be great.” So, about those TPS reports. You know the drill: you’re in your CRM, or network documentation system, or and you need to see certain information in a certain format, “I need to see how many widgets we have to pull…
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SaaS or On-Premise? How to Choose the Right License
By Hannah Ash - September 26, 2017Considering a DCIM, network documentation or OSP (gis-enabled outside plant management software) solution? In addition to understanding the features and functions you need, you may also need to discern which deployment will work best for your organization: SaaS or on-premise? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer: what you choose should depend solely upon what your organization specifically…
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Reducing IT Costs….Made Easy (with the Most Interesting Man in the World)
By Jason Sherman - September 13, 2017As a manager, you are under pressure not to overextend your IT resources — but how can you do that when you don’t know what you have (and what you’re going to need)? The Most Interesting Man in the World is a minimalist: he likes one kind of beer, one outfit and one phrase. He…
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Rack & Power Management Made Easy (with the Most Interesting Man in the World)
By Jason Sherman - September 4, 2017How much space do you have in a rack? Can you power another device without overloading a circuit? Whenever you have a question you can’t fully answer, you need to ask yourself this: how would the most interesting man in the world handle this one? He’d need a way to handle it without breaking a…
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