[dba-Tech] Network drawing and admin tool

Gustav Brock Gustav at cactus.dk
Fri Jan 29 06:02:14 CST 2010


Hi all

Can anyone recommend a good tool to create _and_ maintain a drawing of networks including IP addresses, host- and usernames, passwords, etc?

We are about reconfiguring our network and, though tiny compared to a enterprise network, I've found that with two geographic locations, virtual servers, internal/external/remote backup systems with configurations and schedules, admin remote desktop access, LogMeIn accounts, multiple spam filters and mail servers, database servers, ftp server, inside/outside IP addresses, etc., and remote web access for the users to much of this, it's becoming a mess.

Ideally I would like to have a drawing I can hand to a skilled techie and he/she would in 10 minutes be able to have a clear idea what to do to perform some task, where to look for log files, where to locate backup configurations for routers, etc.

For example, VMware sports an internal or virtual network on a physical machine which can have a quite specific configuration if the virtual servers are for outside access. Most tools I've seen through the years deal with network and physical machines and are not easy to use for virtual machines (which always runs on a physical machine you also need to control).

Another example: SOHO routers have these days a web interface but how do you document the setup of such routers? Sometimes you have a quite convoluted system of port redirections and firewall configuration. To make prints of these pages looks somewhat old-fashioned to me.

/gustav





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