- Oct 9, 1999
- 37,562
- 9
- 81
Does anybody have experience with good network mapping and documentation tools? We could just use Visio, but with the complexity of our network, the requirement for constantly chasing down information, and the rate of change of tracked locations the management of Visio files would become quite a burden.
We have hundreds of locations with a wide variety of environments, from MPLS connected main offices in 14 states, to several smaller VPN connected offices in per state with Sonicwalls, and then hundreds of home based locations which are running Cradlepoint routers off of DSL, cable, or 3G connections. I wish we could just say those home locations are unmanaged and not our problem, unfortunately for us to the business those are just as critical as the MPLS offices.
I'm looking for something that can help map the network in addition to maintain documentation about each device. Software I've looked at so far often doesn't have very configurable fields for documentation. Depending on the type of location, beyond the basic WAN/LAN IPs, device type, etc. we might need to track the name of the carrier, contact information, monthly cost, contract dates, account numbers, etc., and either embedded files or links to external documents with floorplans of the office, etc.
Monitoring isn't an issue, we use PRTG to monitor the sites that have uptime requirements right now, so mostly this is for documentation purposes.
We have hundreds of locations with a wide variety of environments, from MPLS connected main offices in 14 states, to several smaller VPN connected offices in per state with Sonicwalls, and then hundreds of home based locations which are running Cradlepoint routers off of DSL, cable, or 3G connections. I wish we could just say those home locations are unmanaged and not our problem, unfortunately for us to the business those are just as critical as the MPLS offices.
I'm looking for something that can help map the network in addition to maintain documentation about each device. Software I've looked at so far often doesn't have very configurable fields for documentation. Depending on the type of location, beyond the basic WAN/LAN IPs, device type, etc. we might need to track the name of the carrier, contact information, monthly cost, contract dates, account numbers, etc., and either embedded files or links to external documents with floorplans of the office, etc.
Monitoring isn't an issue, we use PRTG to monitor the sites that have uptime requirements right now, so mostly this is for documentation purposes.