Virtual Rack

The Virtual rack provides you with a graphical interactive tool to monitor and maintain you server racks. Devices can be added, removed and can even be sized (1RU, 2RU etc) just like your physical rack. Once the devices are in place, you can place all of your cables (and even change the colour to resemble to physical cable).

After you have completed the layout, you can analyse each device, each interface and even the traffic flow through each cable. 

Adding A Device

After opening a new Virtual Rack window, devices can be dragged from the entity browser. You can add a device to anywhere in the rack (provided there is space available for it).

The Virtual Rack is used to produce an interactive graphical representation of your server racks. To open the Virtual Rack window click File -> New -> Virtual Rack (Ctrl + Shift + V), or you can open a pre-existing rack by clicking on File -> Open (Ctrl + O) and locating the .lvr file.

The Virtual Rack Window is broken into two components:

The Rack 

Mouse-Over Information

The Rack 

The main part of the Virtual Rack window is taken up by two rack views. These two views represent the front and back of the rack. Each rack is broken up into 48 units. The front view (left side) shows status information about the device, whilst the back view (right side) shows all of the network interfaces and their status.

Devices

You can add a device to a rack by locating it in the Entity Browser and dropping it into the the required location in the rack (either front or back view). Once a device has been added, the context menu (right mouse click) allows you to: Change the colour of the text, increase the physical size, decrease the physical size, isolate the cabling and remove the device. Double clicking on a device will zoom in, allowing you to inspect the device easier.

Cables

You can insert a cable by holding the Ctrl key whilst selecting an interface on a device. Once you have located the end point for the cable, hold Ctrl down and click on the interface. The context menu for a cable, allows you to change the colour and to remove the cable.  

Mouse-Over Information

The Mouse-Over Information, displays information about the device, cable or interface that the mouse is currently hovering over. When hovering over a device it shows you the device name and description. The information available for an interface contains input and output utilisation, and input and output transfer rates. When you hover over a cable, the display shows information about the interfaces that the cable is connected to.

 At the bottom of the Mouse-Over Information, there is a "Show Cable Status" checkbox. Selecting this checkbox, changes the cables from their original colour to a colour that represents the status of the interfaces the cables are connected to.  

Once a device is in the rack you can resize it, by selecting Increase Size or Decrease Size from the right click context menu.

To remove a device, select Remove Device from the context menu.

Viewing A Device

To inspect a device, double click on it to see a zoomed in view. This allows you to inspect each interface easier (by hovering the mouse over each interface). To analyse a device even further, you can select "Browse To..." from the context menu this will open up a new Entity Browser window and browser directly to the device.

Adding The Cables

Once your devices are loaded into your rack, it is time to cable everything up. Holding down the Ctrl Key, click on the required interface on the first device. This will place one end of the cable in the interface. To indicate that you are placing a cable, the cursor will now have a thin white cable attached to it.

Next locate the second end point for the cable, and again hold down the Ctrl key and click on the interface. Once the Cable is placed your cursor looses the thin white cable, and a thicker blue cable is placed between the two interfaces.

To change the colour of the cables (to better represent their physical counterparts) select change colour from the right click context menu of the cable. Removing the cable is done in a similar fashion, by selecting Remove cable from the context menu.

When you hover over a cable, the Mouse-Over Information panel displays interface information for each of the endpoints. To further analyse this information you may select "Graph Cable" from the context menu. This will open up a new graph window, graphing the required information. 

To graphically view the status of each cable, you can select the "Show Cable Status" Check box (below the Mouse-Over Information panel). This then changes the colour of each cable to represent the status of the most impaired interface.

Just like your physical rack, once the virtual rack is populated, there will be many cables running everywhere. To minimise the cable clutter when you are working on a device, you may select "Isolate Cabling" from the context menu (alternatively hold down Ctrl and hover the mouse over the device). This will make every cable transparent, except for the cables that are attached to the required device.