When I started doing network stuff, it was all quite simple. You had one physical box. That box had one physical ethernet port and that port had just one IP address bound to it which was tagged on one VLAN. It was quite easy to build an excel table with all your bits of kit, to include their DNS name, IP address, subnet, gateway, VLAN ID, etc.
Nowadays, it's a bit more complex - and I'm finding that to be the understatement of the millenium. I'm working with HP blade servers, using Flex-10 virtual connect with a bit of VMware virtualisation on top. Argh! ILO IP, ESXi management IP, multiple VM IPs...
If that wasn't complex enough, listing all of that in a spreadsheet is a little tricky: the order in which you lay things out depends from which aspect you're looking at it. For example, some people just want to see the ILO addresses (one for each box). Others want to see just the VMware management IPs (ESXi host IPs). Others want to see all the IPs of all the virtual NICs of each VM, and that's just in one physical box. I'd really like to have just one sheet which holds all the data, whilst being easy to "sort" or find stuff.
Of course, all of this info is typically held in some kind of IPAM / support system database which means you can cross link and look up data as you need it. Is there something in Excel that allows this or should I just look at inputing the data into a DB (again, which system, DB, any templates out there?)
So for those of you that do IT management with virtualisation on top, how do you manage your IP / DNS lists? Any pointers for me?
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. I'm working with HP blade servers, using Flex-10 virtual connect with a bit of VMware virtualisation on top. Argh! ILO IP, ESXi management IP, multiple VM IPs...
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