Networks Europe Jul-Aug 2017 | Page 45

It ’ s common sense to know what IT assets you have and to manage them through their life cycle as part of the IT environment . In practice , asset management is often separate to the planning , operations and risk management processes used every day in delivering services .

Automating visualisation We all use diagrams and schematics at some point in planning and managing IT systems . Diagrams help to visualise where assets are , how they link together and what they do . Site surveys and workshops are regularly needed to gather the data required to underpin planning , change and risk documents , often needing external resources and delaying project delivery . Maybe you spend even more and purchase an auto discovery toolset to save time , only to find data and information are different things . Few realise that the effort and cost involved in creating and maintaining IT systems documentation could be dramatically reduced if you automatically linked details of IT assets to the schematics that show the view required .

When you stop and think about it , a rack diagram is just a visual representation of where hardware assets are physically located . A network diagram is just a visual representation of how assets are linked and the types of communications protocols involved . If you want to understand VLAN assignments then a VLAN zone diagram showing logical groupings of network and assets is useful , probably using the same assets that are in racks and on the network . In these simple examples , the data on a network switch or server is replicated across the diagrams , with further replication across asset management lists , discovery tools , monitoring systems and service desk CMDBs . So it seems like common sense to produce and update the three , and more , diagrams from the asset management list or CMDB if possible .

If there were 100 racks then why not refresh the layouts from a common list containing all assets in those racks . But there ’ s a problem ; there often isn ’ t a single asset list , but many . There also isn ’ t a single visual format that will meet all needs , as the overview right shows . If we can reduce the

number of lists containing asset details then we could save many years of administrative effort and reduce project delivery timescales . If we also reduced the number of visual formats and standardised the symbol sets , then even more engineering and management time is saved . In practice we find that there are thousands of spreadsheets and diagrams duplicating data , most with inconsistent naming and visual formats . It seems worth doing – even if it ’ s done badly !

Reducing asset data overload The term ‘ asset ’ has different meanings across IT teams , so there isn ’ t a simple starting point . Asset management has many definitions ; for simplicity , I ’ ll summarise it as typically covering hardware and software assets that have some 3rd party commercial involvement ; where details covering financial value , warranty , maintenance , licence and ownership are involved .

/ CANNONT4 in / CANNONTECHNOLOGIES

R LATEST BROCHURES : SALES @ CANNONTECH . CO . UK OMISING STANDARDS | AWARD WINNING

+ 44 ( 0 ) 1425 632600