Understand network topology mapper easily, with ManageEngine OpManager

A picture is worth a thousand words – especially when you’re trying to find relationships between the interconnections in your network and understand your network’s data. Network topology is a concept used to define and describe the interconnections between devices or elements in an IT infrastructure network. You can view your network topography using a network topology map on network topology mapping software or network topology mapper tool.

Network topology mapper software for your network visualization needs

• Network topology mapping software or simply network topology software, enables IT admins to understand how the overall network infrastructure is organized.
• Using network diagram software, IT admins can better visualize and conceptualize networks and dependencies of devices.
• IT admins managing distributed networks need geographic visualization of their networks. An automatic network mapping tool can chart the organization’s network spanning across geographies.
• By knowing and visualizing the dependency of each device, it’s easy to identify what device or application might be causing a bottleneck in the performance of other devices. This is possible with network topology mapping.

Automatic network topology mapper key features

Network topology mapping tool

Network mapping software OpManager’s Layer2 Maps provide network mapping features that help understand the physical topology organization of your Layer 2 networks by providing a real-time perspective of their interconnections.

Network topology mapper OpManager allows you to discover Layer 2 devices that are connected to your network and draws a logical, visual representation of it with nodes, interconnected layers, and port-to-port connectivity in addition to the interfaces.

Layer 2 Discovery helps network administrators visualize their complete network infrastructure with a live network map. It automatically discovers, maps, and reports on the complete set of devices such as servers, desktops, virtual machines, firewalls, and others present in your infrastructure. The supported protocols for network device discovery in OpManager are CDP, LLDP, IPROUTE, FDB, ARP.

Network topology mapper OpManager also maps the network topology of your virtual infrastructure including VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, and Nutanix devices – This helps with network topology visualization. OpManager’s networking diagram tool allows network administrators to selectively view connections like host to VM, host to network, host to datastore, VM to network, and VM to datastore.

Business Views in OpManager provide a graphical representation of devices according to the business service, requirement, or operation they cater to. Layer 2 maps are meant to map network-level dependencies.

In Business View, IT admins can create network-level dependency mapping or business-level mapping. Adding links between devices in Business Views helps represent network diagrams on the map. These links can be configured based on user or organization requirements. IT admins can also export Layer 2 maps as Business Views using the ‘Save as BV’ option in the OpManager UI. With OpManager’s network mapping solution, you can add a map represent geographical locations, for example, countries or cities where data centers are located.

Network Topology Mapper OpManager can group and subgroup network devices or interfaces by department name, floor number, location, interface type, criticality, or any business-operation-defined group. This helps simplify network monitoring and applying configuration changes for multiple devices at once.

With this approach, IT admins can identify problematic devices and interfaces in each branch, group, or subgroup. This helps in understanding the usage trends of resources in each group or device, thus aiding in forecasting and capacity planning of the IT infrastructure. It eases inventory management and device discovery along with grouping and applying bulk configurations.

Detailed reports can be viewed and scheduled in OpManager to give a clear idea of network devices, interfaces, group performance, availability, activities, and more. Reports can be generated for discovered devices or devices in Business Views, too. Reports can be scheduled on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Also, generated reports can be delivered in PDF or XLS formats, as needed by the IT admin. Custom reports and Top N reports can also be generated.

Know more about network diagrams and the types of network diagramming views.