Device placement planning

How to draw on Racks* pages

Rack shapes

Device placement planning starts from putting Rack shape on one of the Racks* pages. Rack shape can be found on Stencils Page. Rack height can be set Shape Data. Technically there are no rack height limit, but max unit number label is 48.

Rack shape with same ID can be drawn several times – for example to depict different rack sides. When NDAT calculates Rack summaries (for examle total power or units consumtion) it takes rack side info into account. Rack side can be defined in shape data and can have any string name - Front, Back, Cool, Hot, etc.

Rack ID must be file-unique. It means that all the shapes that are placed in rack shapes with same ID, NDAT treats as if they mounted in single rack, even if rack shapes are on different pages.

Strictly speaking such behaviour may not always be correct. For example, imagine we have racks with same ID on different venues. In this case it is recommended to include Venue ID in Rack ID to allow NDAT to treat them as two distinct racks.

Racks that are mentioned in external cable tables should be also drawn on Racks* page. See https://ndat.gitbook.io/ndat-en/cabling-and-link-layer-planning/working-with-cabling-info for details.

NDAT can show key summary values about single rack or set of selected racks. Feature is accesible via rack's context menu.

Rack power limit

Racks have power limit field – if total mounted device power consumption exceeds defined power limit – NDAT will produce appropriate warning in racks report and rack summary window.

When NDAT checks wether rack power limit exeeded or not, it uses sum of values of "Max. power" property of mounted devices.

Duplicate placements

NDAT can check if there are any placement conflicts - that is if any units are used more than once.

Let's say we drew following incorrect placement:

In this case NDAT will show a warning in rack summary:

Rack reports

NDAT collects rack data to special report. Profiles and callouts can be attached to racks – their contents will be included to racks profiled report. Rack report can be generated using buttons on NDAT tab.

Simple and profiled rack report samples can be seen on pictures below.

Device shape types

There are following device shapes to use on L1 / Racks* pages:

l1device – separate physical device with single hostname;
l1clusternode – cluster node – should be used when hostname is shared between several nodes (e.g. like in Cisco stack) or when virtualization cluster should be described; opposite to l1device it additionally has Cluster ID and In-cluster ID fields;
l1blade – devices which is placed in chassis – it has no info about power plugs, but has Bay ID field and Chassis hostname;
l1bladeclusternode – blade which is cluster node – it’s a combination of l1clusternode and l1blade.

Also, on Stencils page there is non-functional dummy device shape. It can be used as a device placeholder - e.g. to depict existing equipment. Placeholder's height can be set in rack units in its shape data.

Cluster nodes details

NDAT uses hostname as unique ID of physical device or virtual machine/switch, including cases when it needs to relate shapes on pages of different types to each other (e.g. to relate physical device to L2 node).

In practice there are situations when several physical devices share single hostname. A striking example of such case is a Cisco StackWise [Virtual].

To cope with these cases NDAT uses two additional fields for cluster nodes:

Cluster ID - unique identifier of cluster of devices;
In-cluster ID - identifier of node in cluster.

Using these fields NDAT can relate physical devices to L2 nodes even if they share same hostname.

Additionally NDAT allows to use these fields in any other appropriate case - e.g. when one needs to indicate that some devices/nodes form a cluster of any type (for example a VMware DRS cluster or PostgreSQL master-sync-async cluster).

HMLPI statuses

On device shapes there are HMLPI marks – they are intended to illustrate current device implementation status:

H – Hostname – Hostname configuration status;
M – Mounted – shows whether device already mounted or not;
L – Label – device marking status;
P – Power – device power circuit status (powered or not);
I – Installed – bare metal OS installation status.

HMLI statuses can be changed via device shapes context menu. And P(ower) circuit status can be changed via device shape data field.

In current NDAT release HMLPI statuses are only shown on diagram, and not collected to any report.

Templates, callouts and profiles

It is useful to take Template like device type description (switch type 1 or 10/25 leaf switch, border router, etc.).

Shape data defined in template automatically spread across linked L1 shapes.

Callouts and profiles that linked to L1 shapes allow to extend properties set with name-value pairs. Callouts have templates too.

Profile and callout contents will be put to profiled devices reports.

Rack distances matrix

When generating L1/L2 links reports NDAT estimates patch-cord lengths. To do so, it takes rack-to-rack distances into account.

Inter rack distances are provided in three steps:

Export rack matrix to Excel table (NDAT -> L1 -> Other -> Export rack matrix);
In exported matrix fill rack distances in meters and save file;
After that import filled rack matrix back to Visio (NDAT -> L1 -> Other -> Import rack matrix).

Distance data saved in document's shape page.

During estimation, if single rack-to-rack distance will not be found NDAT will use default distance which is defined in settings.

Info X fileds

L1 and L2 shapes have three fields with arbitrary text data: Info 1, Info 2, Info 3. These fields are included into L1 links, L2 links, Devices reports and L2 nodes reports.

These fields allow flexible report rows filtering in Excel.

Info X fields reports inclusion is optional (see Settings). But they are included/Excluded together with fields “Model” and “Description”.

In settings it is possible to define custom captions for Info X fields (see Device info x caption and L2 node info x caption settings).

Info X fields are also present in L1 templates. They can optionally be synchronized from Templates to Devices (see settings).

Info X fields can optionally be synchronized from Racks* pages to L2 pages. Synchronization can be enabled/disabled separately for each field Info {1|2|3}.

Device’s management IP addresses

Device shapes on Racks* pages have fields:

Mgmt IP address – main device’s management IP;
Mgmt interface name – management interface name (this name is used for mgmt IP auto update from L3 diagrams);
Allow mgmt IP auto update (enables or disables mgmt IP auto update from L3 diagrams).

To allow mgmt IP auto update, mgmt interface name must be correctly set. Use one of node’s L3 interface names drawn on L3 diagrams (L2 and L3 node’s hostnames must be the same).

Mgmt interface name value can be set in L1 templates.

Mgmt interface name, Allow mgmt IP auto update, Mgmt IP address values are optionally copied from L1 shapes (Racks* pages) to L2 node shapes (L2* pages) (see NDAT -> L1 -> Other -> Sync data from devices to L2 nodes).

If NDAT will not find IP address for particular Hostname and mgmt interface name on L3 diagrams – it will leave defined mgmt IP intact.

Mgmt IP address update performed every time when user clicks L1 -> Refresh -> Refresh all devices mgmt IPs, and when Devices reports generated.