6

Network Map

• Introducing the Network Map

Introducing the Network Map

The 3-DNS Controller Network Map is a dynamic map that illustrates the physical and logical objects in your network. With the Network Map, you can:

• Visualize the overall structure of your 3-DNS Controller network
• Use the navigational tools to modify your network configuration
• View the enabled/disabled state of the various objects in your network

Figure 6.1 Example screen of the Network Map in the Configuration utility

In the Network Map, you can easily see how any component is related to the rest of the network, and how changes to the physical side of the network structure (for example, data centers or servers) can affect the logical side (for example, wide IPs or pools), and vice versa. As shown in Figure 6.1 , the wide IP pool, quote_pool, is made up of virtual servers on a BIG-IP Controller in the data center, NY Data Center.

Working with the Network Map

The Network Map is a highly interactive screen. You can not only review and make changes to your 3-DNS Controller configuration, but you can also use the information table to quickly check whether an object is enabled or disabled. The following sections describe some of the tasks you can do in the Network Map.

Viewing the Network Map

You can view the Network Map only from the Configuration utility.

To view the Network Map using the Configuration utility

1. In the navigation pane, click Network Map.
   The Network Map screen opens.
2. Click Undock if you want to open a popup screen of the Network Map. For more information on working with the Network Map, click Help on the toolbar.

Using the Network Map to review and modify the network configuration

The Network Map contains the following objects: data centers, servers, wide IPs, pools, virtual servers. You can double-click any object on the Network Map to expand the object. The relationship of that object to the rest of the network becomes readily apparent, as the components of that object are highlighted in blue throughout the map. For example, if you double-click a data center, the data center expands, displaying and highlighting all of the servers that reside in that data center. Toward the bottom of the map, all wide IPs that contain a virtual server that belongs to the servers in the selected data center are also highlighted. You can continue to double-click the objects to narrow your scope.

From the Network Map, you can also navigate to the screens where you configure the various objects. You do this by right-clicking the object name. A popup menu opens, displaying various options from which you can choose, depending on what part of that object you want to configure. For example, if you right-click a wide IP name, and from the popup menu select Configure, the Modify Wide IP screen opens, where you can modify the settings for the wide IP definition.

Using the information table on the Network Map

When you double-click any object on the Network Map, the information table at the bottom of the Network Map screen displays the following details about that object:

• Object type
• Object name
• Object IP address
• Any child objects for the highlighted object
• Object status

You can also refresh the Network Map by clicking the Refresh button next to the information table.