Important
The information in this section applies only to the Professional
and Premium editions of Visio 2010.
In this exercise, you will use that foundation to create a
detailed representation of a data center equipment rack by adding the
following equipment: six servers, one PC, a router, and a power supply.
In addition, you will build a “drill-down” hyperlink to the equipment
rack from your stylized network drawing.
-
Drag a Power supply/UPS
shape from the Rack-mounted
Equipment stencil and drag it toward the bottom of the
rack.
The power supply shape, like all equipment shapes intended to
be used within a Visio rack, is a 1-D shape. You will glue its end
points to the connection points that appear on the side rails of the
rack as you get close to the rack shape.
Important
In the following graphic, you see “2U” to the left of the
power supply shape. You may also have noticed “42U” above the rack
shape in the last graphic in the previous exercise.
U is the abbreviation for one
rack
unit. Rack-mountable equipment is designed in
multiples of 1U, which is 1.75 inches or 44.45 mm. Each piece of
equipment you drag into the rack will display its height in
U’s.
-
Glue the Power supply/UPS
to the connectors at the bottom of the rack.
-
Drag a Server shape from
the Rack-mounted Equipment
stencil and drag it to the center of the rack.
The default server shape is very large—8U—but it’s actually an
interesting shape. Like many rack-mounted shapes, you can change its
height, but this shape actually adjusts its appearance as you resize
it; you will see this in the next step.
-
Drag the resize handle at the top of the server shape downward
until the label at the left says 3U.
Tip
As you drag the handle, notice that at 7U, 6U, and
5U, the bottom half of the shape remains unchanged as the upper
half of the shape gets smaller. However, at 4U and below, the
lower part of the shape begins to adjust as well. As you can see,
even a seemingly simple Visio shape can have reasonably
sophisticated behavior.
-
Copy the 3U server shape and paste five copies onto the page.
Drag each copy so it sits just above or below another server in the
rack.
-
Drag a Router 1 shape from
the Rack-mounted Equipment
stencil and position it at the bottom of the rack just above the
power supply.
-
Drag an LCD Monitor shape
from the Rack-mounted Equipment
stencil and attach it to the rack between the bottom server and the
router.
This shape is not the actual monitor—that comes next—but is a
shelf to hold the monitor.
-
Drag a Monitor shape from
the Free-standing Rack Equipment
stencil and position it below the servers. Adjust the position of
the shelf you dropped in the previous step, if necessary, so the
monitor appears to be sitting on the shelf.
-
Drag a Keyboard tray shape
from the Rack-mounted Equipment
stencil and attach it to the rack just below the monitor shelf. Your
finished rack should look like the graphic on the left.
Tip
If you prefer to see the rack without the “U”
dimensions, right-click on the rack or any rack-mounted shape and
click Hide U Sizes. The result is shown in the graphic on the
right. You can turn U sizes back on by right-clicking and
selecting Show U Sizes.
At this point your rack reflects the same equipment shown in
your stylized diagram on the Network Overview page. In the final
steps for this exercise, you will create a “drill-down” hyperlink
from the overview page to the rack.
-
Return to the Network
Overview page and draw a bounding box around the router
and the Data Center group in the
lower-right corner of the page.
-
Press Ctrl+K to open the Hyperlinks dialog box.
-
In the Hyperlinks dialog
box, click the Browse button to
the right of Sub-address. The
Hyperlink dialog box opens.
-
In the Hyperlink dialog
box, select Data Center Detail
from the Page list and select
Page from the Zoom list.
-
Click OK.
-
In the Description text box
of the Hyperlinks dialog box,
type Drill down to
Data Center, and then click OK.
Important
It’s very important to understand that you’ve just applied
the identical hyperlink to all selected shapes in one step. The
hyperlink is not attached to the part of the page you selected
with the bounding box, but is attached to each selected shape
individually. Visio makes it very easy to apply the same change to
multiple shapes, which is great if that’s what you want to do.
However, you do need to be careful that you don’t inadvertently
apply a change to multiple shapes.
-
Right-click on any of the hyperlinked shapes, and then click
Drilldown to Data Center.
You will see a full-page view of the rack diagram on the Data
Center Detail page.
Clean Up
Save your changes to the Network
Diagram with Rack diagram but leave it open if you are
continuing with the next exercise.
The rack diagram you’ve created shows the key equipment in this
simple data center. What might you do to enhance your rack drawing?
Consider these ideas:
-
Use data
linking to link the
equipment in your rack to a spreadsheet or database containing asset
IDs, serial numbers and other inventory information.
-
Link your rack equipment to a real-time or near-real-time data
source so the equipment in your rack contains status
information.
-
Use data visualization techniques to help the user of your diagram
understand the data “behind the shapes.”
-
Add a patch panel and network cabling. Consider putting the
cabling on a separate layer so you can
easily show or hide it.
-
Add data to the rack shape so its location and other
information is part of your network inventory reports.
-
Add hyperlinks to the rack and/or the
equipment in the rack and link to photographs of the actual wiring
closet or equipment.
-
Change the hyperlinks on the Network Overview page so that
instead of linking each server to the Data Center Detail page, you
link it to a specific server shape in the rack. When you do this,
try setting the hyperlink zoom level to 150% or 200%.
See Also
If you would like to see a sample network diagram that is
similar to the one you’ve created in the previous several exercises
but that also has several additional features, on the File tab, click
New; in the Template Category section, click Sample Diagrams, and then
double-click IT Asset Management.
