Name: Integrating Excel, Visio with Data Center Management Toolsets
Start: 2010-04-26T14:00:00Z
End: 2010-04-26T14:47:33.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 4.14

How to implement improved practices and systems for enterprise environments covering data centres, networks, services etc.

Many organisations would like more complete and accurate IT systems documentation of their current and planned environments. The simplest way is to consolidate isolated spreadsheets and diagrams to reduce maintenance effort. Our webinar will cover techniques to reduce workload and improve consistency for IT infrastructure technologies such as networks, servers, applications, data centres, cabling, etc. The benefits of accurate documentation are cost reduction, faster delivery of projects, better management of capacity and faster fault resolution - across the various life cycles of technologies and team restructuring.

How to Document IT Infrastructure - legacy and planned

Problem – “We have to maintain 100s or 1000s of Visio diagrams to explain the complexity of our data centres, networks, applications, services and more. But… it’s difficult because it takes too much resource, it’s difficult to get consistency, we lack in-depth Visio skills and changes are constant.”

Answer – Use Visio’s automation features and get an infrastructure database to create and maintain large amounts of Visio diagrams which are consistent and up to date. 

Result - Less engineering effort and skills, faster decision making, improved communications between project and operations teams. Plus, information is readily available for migration planning, risk assessments, impact analysis, change and capacity across a large estate.

If you are currently manually maintaining Visio diagrams for racks, floor plans, cloud, data centres, servers, applications, ITIL service maps (and more). Then this webinar could reduce a lot of pain and cost. 

From a recent project, is 20 minutes (4% of a man day) more attractive than 68-man days to draw 270 rack layouts? Or 300 network diagrams refreshed every night?

Visio Diagramming On A Large Scale

Our webinar covers methods and best practices to manage multi-site connectivity and data centres. We will cover common issues such as naming and labelling, network configurations, build documents, workflow, etc. Alongside record keeping these are all challenges that make connectivity management difficult. The aim is faster delivery of change with less effort/cost and centralised control. Both data and power examples are covered in the webinar.

Managing Connectivity Across Multi-Site Enterprises

The convergence of industrial systems with IT and cloud technologies introduces additional complexity that has to be managed and controlled - often as with IT systems. This webinar shows how techniques used to efficiently document IT system complexity can be applied to other environments including manufacturing, medical, transportation, building and logistics management. With cyber attacks focusing on critical shared infrastructure, the same documentation needs apply to IT and non-IT systems for day to day operations and cyber resilience to be assured.

Documenting Complex Industrial Automation, BMS and IoT Systems

Mapping and understanding GRC (Governance, Risk Management and Compliance) is necessary to ensure cybersecurity policies and processes are maintained effectively, avoiding duplication of effort and clarifying focus for shared IT engineering resources. As well as having sector led regulatory needs, there is often a multitude of management frameworks and standards involved – CoBit, ISO27001, NIST CSF, PCI DSS, CSC, ISO2000, TBM, eTOM, etc. (to name a few). All have their own focus and recommendations, so efficient ways of defining and maintaining business objectives, appropriate internal controls, processes and policies is important to meet GRC business needs. With more regulations being introduced by governments, GRC requirements are becoming increasingly complex so we’ll cover systematic ways of mapping common requirements to save a lot of effort. We are pleased to have support from Charlie Muir, Consulting Services Director at cyber security specialists  Secrutiny.

Mapping GRC Policies, Regulations, Standards and Processes

Understanding and communicating change impacts, dependencies and risks is made all the more difficult when it is all conceptual. This webinar looks at the different methods available to create and maintain diagrams when 100s or 1000s of servers are involved. Makes meeting risk and compliance much easier for frameworks such as ITIL, NIST CSF, CoBit, 27001, PCI, NERC CIP, etc.

How to Map Applications, Systems and Cloud Infrastructure

Creating and maintaining IT focused Visio diagrams isn’t simple, but it is made a lot easier using our free AssetGen Visio utilities. This webinar will show you how to use our Visio add-in and data driven  methods to reduce manual effort and improve consistency. Our presenter will cover examples of rack layouts, network diagrams, ITIL service maps, cabling, floor plans etc, to show how days and hours of engineering time can be reduced to seconds. If you are an existing Visio user you can use some of the methods immediately!

Visio tips & tricks: Save time creating IT schematics using our Visio Utilities

We map data flows to show understanding of system transactions, dependencies, fail over, compliance with regulations, change impacts, cloud migrations, firewall settings and capacity needs. Capturing, creating and maintaining data flow diagrams across many systems and applications in a large enterprise is not simple, as just mapping one system can be a challenge. In our webinar we cover Visio automation techniques to capture and refresh multiple sets of data flows, creating an institutional knowledge base lacking in many enterprises and service providers.

Using Visio to Map Data Flows In Enterprises

Diagrams help understand network topologies, but it isn't easy to represent complex infrastructure when there are so many network types and information needs. The convergence of IoT, security, signage and BMS with ICT results in many parallel “networks” on a mix of physical and virtual infrastructure. This webinar will focus on reducing effort and improving quality of project and operational network topology diagrams, complementing discovery, monitoring and workflow toolsets. 
We will cover LAN, VLAN, SDN, SAN, cloud, copper/fiber/power, environments, data flows, resilience, addressing, etc.

Network Diagramming Multi-Site Infrastructure - 45 minutes

Many enterprises are finding that a mix of on premise, hybrid and cloud computing needs more efficient management of their data center estate. Having facilities provided by 3rd parties normally needs improved management controls between IT teams and service teams, otherwise cost, delays and mistakes occur in the "gaps" that appear in planning, build, capacity and risk management. This webinar focuses on the IT side of data centers covering active and passive infrastructure.

Planning and Managing Data Center "White Space"

Part 2 goes into the detail of capturing copper, fibre and power connectivity of multi-site IT infrastructure. Our Part 1 webinar on 18th February 2021 covered the planning and structure of the audit process, with many requesting a deeper dive into our methods and the tools used. Part 2 shows how forms, reports and diagrams are used by audit teams to simplify the capture of existing, evolved infrastructure spread over multiple locations. We assume attendees have seen Part 1 to benefit most from this webinar.

Part 2 How to capture fibre and copper connectivity of existing infrastructure

How can you be confident that systems and data are safe, when the complexity involved can't be easily understood? External and internal threats are risks can't be recognised and protected against when there are communication gaps between IT teams, service providers and outsource partners. If infrastructure documentation isn't trusted, comprehensive and maintained, then expect change management, risk control and governance to suffer.

How Secure Are IT Systems?

When connectivity documentation (or lack of) doesn't support project, risk and capacity information needs, then a connectivity audit is needed. David Cuthbertson will cover how Square Mile captures multi-site IT infrastructure data, so physical connectivity can be managed and updated efficiently. It can be expensive and painful to capture copper, fibre and power connectivity - but even more expensive and painful if you do it badly. And if the data isn't trusted or detailed enough then maybe another audit is needed - so best to get it right the first time!

How to capture fibre and copper connectivity of existing IT infrastructure

Many organisations would like more complete and accurate IT systems documentation, preferably with less effort. There are better ways than creating a multitude of isolated spreadsheets and diagrams that become impossible to maintain. Our webinar will cover techniques to reduce workload and improve consistency for documenting IT infrastructure technologies such as networks, servers, applications, data centres, cabling, etc. The larger the infrastructure the greater the benefits of the methods that we’ll cover. The solutions could be as simple as adopting standard naming conventions, linking Visio diagrams to Excel, or maybe integrating data sources to remove duplication.

How To Document IT Infrastructure

To coincide with our brand new free connector for VLAN Visio diagrams, our host David Cuthbertson will be showing how to document VLANs for large scale enterprises.

Using Visio To Document Enterprise VLANS

How to link specialist data center management toolsets with Excel and Visio. Combining the flexibility of MS office tools with the accuracy and depth of data center management systems.

Integrating Excel, Visio with Data Center Management Toolsets

Excel

Visio

Diagrams

data

center

Capacity

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Integrating Excel, Visio with Data Center Management Toolsets

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