Software to draw IT-infrastructure

Question

I have to design and present the ICT-infrastructure for a startup. Does anybody know a good piece of software for making a good looking layout of the ICT-infrastructure?

Until now I have been doing this by hand, but this time I need to present it in a very nice way.

What do you use?

I prefer software that will run on Ubuntu Linux, but Windows is also fine.

Thanks... Marcel

Answer 1

On the freeware diagramming side you can take a look at Dia, it's similar to Visio.

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

Another handy freeware tool I use to actually discover/map the devices is MikroTik's The Dude:

The Dude network monitor is a new application by MikroTik which can dramatically improve the way you manage your network environment. It will automatically scan all devices within specified subnets, draw and layout a map of your networks, monitor services of your devices and alert you in case some service has problems.

Answer 2

Most folks I know use Microsoft Visio for such tasks.

You might also check-out a free CAD program.

Answer 3

You're looking for something like LANState.

LANState also offers several handy features especially helpful to the system administrators:

• Modeling a local area network in a visual mode, drawing conditional connecting lines, areas, rooms with phone numbers, employee's names, and then saving the result as map, image and print out.
• Monitoring usage of shared resources by other users, and load of a network card.
• Sending messages to any computer on the network or users group.
• Shutting down and restarting computers on the network.
• Turning on remote computers (wake-on-LAN).
• Creating reports with hosts and their attributes (DNS, IP, MAC-address table).
• Scanning ports (TCP and UDP).
• Retrieving computer's network name by its IP address, pinging, tracing routes.
• Obtaining information from remote computers: registry, event log, devices, services, processes running, resources, connections, accounts, etc.

Answer 4

I've used both of them and found them to be useful.

http://www.pacestar.com/lanflow/index.html

http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/netdiagrammer/main.php