Feedback from Techs that work in data centers

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a2vr6

Weaksauce
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Aug 6, 2006
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This question is geared mostly towards Tech's that work in data center environments and initially configure/roll out new servers. What does your company use to track IP/Ports assignment for the servers that are put into production? Any specific software you use keep track of this info or is do you have automated s/w and h/w?
 
a2vr6 said:
This question is geared mostly towards Tech's that work in data center environments and initially configure/roll out new servers. What does your company use to track IP/Ports assignment for the servers that are put into production? Any specific software you use keep track of this info or is do you have automated s/w and h/w?
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Our network team uses excel spreadsheets. we have thousands of servers so i guess excel scales out. lol. I think they use just because they don't have anything better. And I would be working 24x7x365 if I tried to help everyone do things a better way.
 
Good cable/port labeling and Excel FTW. Excel is probably the easiest thing to use because most people in a business have it.
 
MorfiusX said:
Good cable/port labeling and Excel FTW. Excel is probably the easiest thing to use because most people in a business have it.
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Yea really. I know a few guys that had like an access database for it but they kept more information in it. For most uses excel or some other spreadsheet works fine.
 
We've got some Nortel QIP software that's garbage.
We're looking for something better at the moment as well. The only good things about our current setup is:
Web based, and uses logins so you can only mess up your own deligated subnet, not every one's.
 
Why did'nt you bump or even look up your previous post? I gave a couple of things to use, and asked a question.

If you know what the SNMP OID is for MAC address you could create something yourself.
 
excel spreadsheets for the win!


And of course, well labeled switches and servers.
 
As note: I use SolarWinds Engineers Edition. It has network discovery and many other tools. I still use Excel because my client don't have a copy of SolarWinds so that they can view the database.
 
MorfiusX said:
As note: I use SolarWinds Engineers Edition. It has network discovery and many other tools. I still use Excel because my client don't have a copy of SolarWinds so that they can view the database.
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I have used solarwinds in the past, its pretty nice. Most of our clients use excel though, one uses access i believe.
 
I document all of our infrastructure in excel (tabbed format of course). Network, power, hardware, software. It's the easiest way. If I worked in data center managing 1000s of machines I'd probably use Access.
 
Excel is fine if you have a limited number of servers, not a lot of changes, and only one person(or maybe a small group) that keeps track of it.

Excel does not scale into larger environments.

Lucent's QIP is expensive, and most likely offers way more than what is needed in this case.

I recently tested IPplan and I think it is pretty nice. Installation and setup is straight forward. Usage is fairly self explanatory was well. You can setup septate "customers" then inside of those you can allocate networks, and then subnets in inside of those. There is room for comments, locations, contact info etc.

http://iptrack.sourceforge.net


There are quite a few commercial offerings as well, but unless you are operating on a very large scale I don't see a point in them for the most part.
 
Thanks for all the input, we use excel also but looking try do something different. I will look into the s/w mentioned in this thread. Keep them coming!
 
Visio + Excel.

At work ...
Visio does great for visually displaying server rack layouts, plus lots of various network diagrams. Excel is used for arranging specific details. Combined, Visio offers the high-level overview, while Excel gives the low-level view.
 
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