Category Archives: Networking

visio networks

How to produce good documentation – Part 4 – Diagraming a network

So in my last post, I looked at how to record the logical information about your IP addresses and switchport locations, making it easier for troubleshooting in the future.

Now lets tackle the big one, how to produce good documentation when diagraming your network.

For this, I am going to use a real world example of a network I audited, and then made a visio diagram. Personally, I don’t believe this is one of the best visio diagram’s I have produced, however it includes a lot of various parts which I think are useful.

So below, you find the original hand drawn diagram as I was tracing cables and devices, and then the final product.

Note: Unfortunately I do not have the Visio file available for distribution used in this post.

The diagram

original diagramNetwork Diagram

Starting off

Continue reading How to produce good documentation – Part 4 – Diagraming a network

vmware

VMware NSX – Just an introduction

With my background in Networking and Virtualisation, VMware’s NSX is something which interests me deeply, as such I’ve attended a handful of sessions online, and also at the UK VMUG where Chris Whal presented on the subject.

Here’s my own interpretation of this new technology.

What is NSX?

Its software-defined networking, you don’t need to buy any hardware to implement it, although you do need a running VMware environment.

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Continue reading VMware NSX – Just an introduction

network

How to produce good documentation – Part 3 – Network IP’s & Interfaces

The time is here, lets look at starting to document that network of yours.

Now lets look at the other side of the coin.

Click the above for the templates used in this diagram

SwitchPort Diagrams/Tables

So it’s not all creative visio diagrams, one of the best pieces of documentation I find that I produce is actually a switchport diagram.

Using Excel to diagram out a given number of switches, mapping the interfaces to the hosts or devices in which is connected to them.

Continue reading How to produce good documentation – Part 3 – Network IP’s & Interfaces

dvs

vCenter lost DVS configuration – Fixing the hosts

So I hit an interesting issue whilst performing a VMware upgrade from 4.0 to 5.5. There was a legacy issue left where vCenter had lost its knowledge/configuration of the DVS Setup.

Im not entirely sure what happened or when, as it was an existing environment, I only know I had to fix it. (Many thanks to the help from my good friend over at www.vmtechy.com for refreshing me on the ESX 4.0 command line to fix this).

The Symptoms

Within the vCenter Client, on the host summary tabs.

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When looking at the Virtual Machine settings.

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Continue reading vCenter lost DVS configuration – Fixing the hosts