Can a rack diagram be made with Orion maps? I have searched, but everything I find seems to be about Network Atlas. We have rack diagrams in Visio, but would like to put them in an Orion map in Solarwinds. Thanks for the help.
@rbeezley You can certainly leverage Orion Maps. What most others have done is leveraged something like Visio in this case. Some have even taken pictures. Regardless you would use these images as the backgrounds in Orion Maps, and then pull the same entities you want represented from the Entity Library onto the canvas. You can customize the icons, labels, and size to obtain the desired look and feel you are after. I didn't have any examples I could share at the moment as I do not have permission to share the maps I assisted other clients with but happy to help if you run into any hurdles.
This is the latest Orion Maps post which has some tips and tricks mentioned: https://thwack.solarwinds.com/product-forums/the-orion-platform/f/forum/3447/orion-platform---2020-2---an-orion-map-to-success
Thank you... We put the Rack ID in the location field. Is it possible to create a dynamic map based on the location field?
To completely address your question, there are essentially two types of Orion Maps. The first kind are the dynamic maps available on any monitored entity details page. This would include Groups. The maps are kept up to date for you and accessible from the tab or sub-view labeled Map.
They are purposely designed to show your "seed" entity, and highlight the immediate relationships, dependencies, or topology connections to that entity. The layouts, icons, and other aspects of these maps are not customizable in this case. You could in theory use a dynamic query to auto-populate a group and would therefore have a map of all those entities in the group using this option.
The second style of maps are the custom maps. These are maps that are built by the user where you can customize nearly every aspect of the entities monitored along with the canvas itself. Whatever is necessary in order to get the desired layout, look, and representation you are after. You can certainly use the RACK ID in your location field to filter the Entity Library for quick access to a specific set of entities, and then add them to the canvas in bulk.
After that, use the properties panel to perform any further customizations you need. These maps would require manual intervention to add a device to the map if a new device has been added to your monitoring environment.
We have certainly heard the desire for dynamic maps as a request, and this is something we continue to look in too. There are some unique challenges we would have to solve in order to make this work. Just one simple example is if you created a map, most of the times the layout is an important factor for how that map is presented. Therefore if a new device automatically shows up on the map, where does it go? Is there a specific area of the canvas where the new object belongs?
That is just a simple example, but if you have any thoughts or feedback around what might make sense for your organization, please share it with us!
I hope this helps.
Thank you!
For what its worth, I do have a couple suggestions for maps in general which may already be on your roadmap.
A duplicate button for shapes, labels and images. This would allow you to get one setup like you want and duplicate it and then make any individual changes needed.
Alignment buttons (left, right, top, bottom) for all elements on the map. You could select multiple elements and then align their left edges for example. Gridlines when in edit mode would also be useful for aligning things.
