Feedback from evaluation
Completed
Hi
We're currently evaluating your product and are quite impressed with the ease of use. Below I will list some points that came up during the evaluation. Some are feature requests, others are questions.
1) Is it possible to roll back changes? Particularly considering how easy it is to make bulk changes
2) The history/audit log should contain more information: For changes, before- and after-values for changes. For deletions, the before-value should be listed. For additions, the after-value should be listed.
3) Backup – any recommendations on how to back up the system correctly?
4) Extend the power mapping from PDU to include information about the electrical circuit that’s feeding the PDU.
5) Impact chart on a switch should show the devices that use the switch’s ports
6) Display a row of racks, either front or back
7) What are groups used for?
8) Field to specify technical owner/responsible for a device or asset – we have both technical server owners and customers for all our devices
9) A general search field should be part of the tool bar on all pages to make it easy to search for devices.
10) We have quite a variety of servers. For example, we have a lot of HP DL360 G7. But they are differently configured when it comes to PSU’s. Do we then make several hardware models of this server type, with different PSU configurations? This would entail that a server would change model, if we add another PSU to the server later on.
Kind regards,
Jens
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Jens,
Thanks for taking the time and asking/suggesting these. Please see comments below:
1.) No option to roll back changes directly. You can do full system backup before making any major changes and roll back that way(or go back to last scheduled backup).
2.) For historical logs, good point. We would look into this more.
3.) For backups, you can do one time or scheduled backups from the appliance manager: http://docs.device42.com/device42-appliance-manager/setting-up-backup-device42-appliance-manager/
4.) Complete power path is on our list to do.
5.) Switch impact chars is in the works already. We are working on some premium features(different pricing) and this might be included as a premium feature.
6.) Showing row of racks: you can do using actions from the rack list view. You can select racks(and search/filter by building room), and from action drop down you can show front or back of multiple racks. We will also look into adding row field on the list page for easy sorting.
7.) Groups are for ownership of application components. Like oracle db running on a server would be owned by DB team which would be a group. So when you generate application impact lists, you can quickly see who is responsible for which app.
8.) Custom key value pairs are in works and you would be able to use that. If you look under "customer" that would give you an idea for how these would look in a device as well.
Another option could be to use Asset LM(lifecycle management) tab where you can assign/checkout device to an enduser.
9.) General search field: good point. We will look into this.
10.) Hardware and PSUs: This is a good point. Device42 software has evolved a bit on this. In our previous versions(prior to v316), we were using devices in rack to estimate power average using hardware model PSU #. But now this has changed with PDU port level power calculations and # of PSUs(and redundancy option) on hardware model are no longer needed. These might be deprecated in the future versions. Also 80% power calculation on the rack list page would be taken out(and hopefully replaced with some other metric using PDUs).
As long as PSU wattage is not changing, you would be able to use same hardware model for devices. e..g even if hardware model has 2 PSUs added, you can add the device to as many PDU ports as you want. We are only using the watts from hardware model to do the calculations. For different PSU wattage, you have to either add a new hardware model or override wattage in the PDU port.Thanks again for the detailed feedback and looking forward to more of these in future :).
Regards,
Raj Jalan.
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Thank you for these answers.
I am curious to hear a bit more about your premium license thoughts. I am sure that we would opt for a premium license if we are to go with your product and would like to know some more about the pricing.
Also, can you share some details about the roadmap - which things are likely to make it soon and which features are more long term?
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Jens,
Details of few of these topics are not publicly available yet. I will send you a private note and we can discuss further.
Thanks,
Raj Jalan.
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Hi, v320 was published today and point 6, 8 and 10 have been addressed as discussed below.
Sortable row column in rack list
In addition to sorting. filtering by room, you can now sort by row as well and choose to show display of the selected racks.
Custom key pair value for devices
With addition of key/pair values as custom fields, it is easy to define custom form fields.
key, value: this pair would show up across all devices and great for values that can be assigned to many devices.
key, value2: value2 is private for each device.
Notes: is free form text field.Hardware model PSU change
# of power supplies in hardware model is not used anymore in any calculations and might be deprecated soon. PSU redundancy option has been taken out.
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