Cable Management

This extension brings to TeemIp objects from the cabling world that will allow you to document the physical connections between CIs.

TeemIp cable management allows you to document the cable layouts of your organization. Connect physical interfaces to wall mounted network sockets, to patch panels hosted in racks or to other physical interfaces, document your patch cables and your underlying cabling layout, manage your cross connects: the extension enables a large scope of connection scenarios as the following drawing highlights:

Furthermore, the extension displays the wiring that links devices, physical interfaces and network sockets together, like:

Note that the drawing has been manually rearranged.

The TeemIp Cable Management extension is licensed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation. This gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify TeemIp Cable Management under certain conditions. Read the ’license.txt’ file in the TeemIp distribution. TeemIp Cable Management is provided AS IS with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE WARRANTY OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

There is no specific limitations with that extension.

TeemIp standalone: The extension is embedded in TeemIp standalone, starting with TeemIp 3.1.

iTop: When installed on an iTop application, you need IPAM for iTop to be installed as well.

In both case, make sure that Datacenter Management has been selected at installation time.

TeemIp standalone: Installation is done with the application itself, through the setup.

iTop: To add the extension on an iTop application, follow the Standard installation process.

No specific configuration is required in TeemIp's configuration file or in IP configs for that extension to work. However, some default settings may be changed:

Under the Modules specific settings section, default parameters used by the Find wiring action on Cross Connects may be overwritten by the following configuration lines.

	'teemip-cable-mgmt' => array (
		'find_wiring_paths' => array (
		  'max_rack_levels_to_cross' => 5,
		  'max_offers_to_display' => 32,
		),
	),

Under the Other Settings fieldset, the Allow cabling toward another organizations parameter enables patch panels from a given organization to be connected to patch panels of other organizations.

As everyone knows, a patch panel is a piece of hardware with multiple ports that helps organize a group of cables. Each of these ports contains a wire that goes to a different location and can be set for fiber optic cables, cat5 cables, RJ45 cables, and many others. That class allows you to register them in TeemIp's CMDB.

Should the extension Datacenter View Extended be installed on TeemIp, the following additional attributes will appear.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Patch Panel dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in:

With the extension Datacenter View Extended, Patch Panel display will look like:

If the capacity is set, to value c for instance, TeemIP will offer to automatically create c network sockets and to attach them to the patch panel. If n network sockets do already exist, with n < c, then the menu will still be displayed but only (c - n) network sockets will be created. When created, network socket will be set to inactive mode and will inherit of attributes location, rack, patch panel (obviously) and interface connector (if exists) from the patch panel.

If some network sockets are already attached to the patch panel, TeemIP will offer to automatically connect the back end interface of these network sockets to remote sockets located in another patch panel of another Rack. This action removes to TeemIP administrator the burden of creating back end network cables for each of the network sockets attached to a patch panel.

When action is launched, TeemIP offers first to select the remote patch panel…

.. before creting the links in accordance with the number of available sockets in the remote rack.

A network socket is the passive physical piece of hardware where you plug a network cable to establish a link between different network devices.

Friendly name of a network socket is automatically computed as the concatenation of the location name, rack name (if exists), patch panel name (if exists) and code of the socket.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Network Socket dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in or select it directly from the Patch panel detailed display :

Network Sockets have 2 sides:

• A front end where RJ45 cables or optical fibers are plugged in,
• A back end that links the socket to another network socket.

Attribute Status is read only and automatically computed:

• If no back end network socket is set, status is set to Inactive,
• If a back end network socket is set but if no physical interface nor network socket is set, status is set to Ready,
• If a Cross Connect is set and if it is Active, status is set to Active
• If a back end network socket is set and if a physical interface or a network socket is set, status is set to Active.

In other words:

Attribute Cross Connect, is set or unset from the Cross Connect objet, at the time where the Network Socket is attached to the Cross Connect, as part of the local or peer unit information. See below

Network sockets implements three 1:1 relations. As the datamodel doesn't provide such attributes by default, these 1:1 relations are automatically computed when objects are created, modified or deleted: when one side of the relation is changed, the other sides (new and old when appropriate) are changed. These relations are:

• 1:1 relation between the physical interface of a CI and the network socket attribute of the interface,
• 1:1 relation between the network socket and a remote network socket,
• 1:1 relation between the network socket and a back end one.

A cross connect represents the cabling necessary to establish a direct link between two separate organizations in a data center, thus allowing the establishment of a private network link and eliminating the need to connect them using the internet.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Cross Connect dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in :

A cross connect documents a link between one or two network socket hosted in a patch panel sitting in a rack of a given organization and one or two peer network socket hosted in a peer patch panel sitting in a peer rak of a peer organization. The Find wiring paths action will display all the available cabling paths that may be establish to connect 2 network sockets that answer to the previous conditions.

Network admin may select one of the offered path and manually create it within TeemIP.

TeemIp Cable management extension alters Physical interfaces with new attributes that allow connections to a network socket or to the interface of another connectable CI.

These 2 relations brought by the extension implement 1:1 relations. As the datamodel doesn't provide such attributes by default, these 1:1 relations are automatically computed when objects are created, modified or deleted: when one side of the relation is changed, the other sides (new and old when appropriate) are changed. These relations are:

• 1:1 relation between the physical interface and the network socket attribute of the interface,
• 1:1 relation between the physical interface and another physical interface.

A connection between a physical interface and a network socket will look as follows.

A connection between two physical interfaces will look as follows.

A front end network cable (known as well as patch cable, patch cord or patch lead) represents the piece of hardware that connects 2 network sockets through their front end.

Friendly name of a front end network cable is automatically computed as the concatenation of the two network sockets' name.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Front End Network Cable dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in or select it directly from the Patch Panel or Network Socket detailed displays :

A back end network cable represents the piece of hardware that connects 2 network sockets through their back end.

Friendly name of a back end network cable is automatically computed as the concatenation of the two network sockets' name.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Back End Network Cable dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in or select it directly from the Patch Panel or Network Socket detailed displays :

A device network cable represents the piece of hardware that connects the front end of a network socket and the interface of a connectable CI.

Friendly name of a device network cable is automatically computed as the concatenation of the network socket's name and the interface's name.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Device Network Cable dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in or select it directly from the Patch Panel or Network Socket detailed displays :

A direct network cable represents the piece of hardware that connects directly the interface of a connectable CI to the interface of another connectable CI.

Friendly name of a device network cable is automatically computed as the concatenation of the two interface's name.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Direct Network Cable dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in or select it directly from the interace's display :

Breakout cables are designed to split or combine optical fibers or copper wires into multiple individual connectors. They eliminate the need for separate cables by consolidating multiple fibers or wires into a single cable bundle which simplifies installation, reduces cable congestion, and improves cable management.

Friendly name of a breakout cable is automatically computed as the concatenation of the two rack's name and the cable's label.

(*) The relation holds a “UsedLinks” attribute which documents the number of wires consummed by the link.

In the Network dashboard that is accessible from a submenu of the standard CMDB overview menu, find the Breakout Cable dashlet, click on it and select the item you are interested in or select it directly from the interace's display :

Once connections between Devices, Physical interfaces and Network Sockets are documented, the physical path that connects them all can be visualized through the menu “Wiring…” displayed under the “Other Actions” menu of Connectable CIs, Physical Interfaces and Network Sockets.

That action displays the wiring layout that connects the device it has been launch from, and all the elements that are part of the cabling path. For instance, from a backend server application :

Two new typological elements are brought by the extension:

The extension groups network specific typological elements in the dashlet “Network typology configuration”.