Visualizing Servers, Racks, and other DataCenter equipment

[robin850]

The ability to graphically view this equipment and the relationships is very helpful. But of course I want "just a little more".....

Or maybe this is already possible? Go ahead and "whomp the noobie" if needed.


1) The "rack" item has values for "rack units" and "units in use". How can the "units in use" be driven by data from the equipment associated to that rack?

2) We would like to not only relate the server to the rack, but also to the "position" in the rack. How can this be done?
Example: If we know the server is a "2u" and it is in OU 1, that means it uses up OU 1 and 2 (leaving OU3 through 42 available, assuming a 42U capacity rack)

3) This next part is "blue sky" and probably is best done in an external visualization tool. Can we graphically show a rack and the servers in it IN PROPER OU ORDER, along with the open spaces?

btw, has anyone done an interface to/from Visio or some other tool (perhaps an open-source visualization tool)?

cheers,

robin850

[robin850]

Sorry, there was no further development on this topic at that time.

[half_baked1]

I'm in the same boat. I'd like our organization to migrate from a home-grown asset system which does little well EXCEPT that it can generate a visual rack layout based on servers in rack, device size (1u, 2u, etc) and rack location (@40u, @20u, etc).

Adding device size/location isn't hard to do, but not sure how I could construct the visualization of device placement in rack. My Jelly-fu is not strong, but my copy-fu is excellent. Was wondering if there is an existing graphical component I can tap into to build the visual model.

[marcelo_moreli]

Did you finally built a visual rack layout?