How useful is Netzoom?

[nettle]

I am currently tasked with creating many Visio network diagrams of all sorts. Rack elevation, floor layout, logical, logical-physical hybrid. I have to do this for current networks as well as build diagrams for contractors to use when building new networks remotely.

The scope is basically 30 cabinets worth of equipment X 12 X however many different diagram types end up being needed. I am currently looking into the Netzoom 9 product. Their info is a bit sparse on their site and in their user guide, and I found the demo version to be pretty lackluster. It was slow and so many of the features I wanted to experiment with were disabled. Having all of the shapes I need in one place is very helpful, but I am more interested in the templates they have for Rack Diagrams.

How helpful would Netzoom be in my situation? How many short-cuts could it provide me to create large amounts of diagrams that need to link together and share information? What about people using it, what do you think about it?

Thank you!

[aledlund]

I'm a believer! Some of the shapes are a little bloated (professional opinion by some of my peers), but if detailed shapes are important it is a good decision. Their turnaround for shapes that are new/missing is very good (a couple of days). I especially like the drill down on subshapes (i.e. a large chassis will have multiple possible subcomponents that they do the search for). The last time I looked, under the covers they use a MSAccess datalayer. With that many drawings (sounds like you intend to keep the data in them) you should also be planning your document repository (read Sharepoint).
al

[nettle]

Thanks aledlund!

One of their sales people gave us a presentation today. Detailed shapes are pretty important, because in many cases we have contractors installing equipment, or tier1 staff supporting it. So having exact shapes is very helpful. The number of shapes and the fast turn-around on new shapes makes the single-user license worth it for as many diagrams as we do. Plus they said NZ11 is coming out at the end of the month, which has better reporting features and a feature that makes it easier to draw connections between racks.

The cabinet diagram templates look very helpful, but I am not sure how much I will be able to use that because I have to create diagrams that others will then keep updated, and they won't have NZ.