Visio by DBTPB: NX-3060-G6 Dynamic Front View Visio Shape

 

I’ve been toying with idea to make more dynamic front view shapes for Nutanix.

• What if you could have disk labels showing disk type and size?
• What if you could label the disks also for partially populated blocks?
• And you wouldn’t have to label the disks individually/manually?

Design Specs

• Rather than labelling each disk manually
  • Quite time consuming and boring
• All the possible disk combinations are coded to Visio shape
• Use “Shape Data” pull-down menus to select
  • Disk layout (number of disks + disk type)
  • Disk size
• And with multi-node models select
  • Number of nodes from pull-down menu
• Disk label color and text changes accordingly
• Disc activity lights get turned on / off for populated / non populated disk bays

Dynamic shape NX-3060-G6

• Dynamic disk labels
  • Change disk label color and text via “Shape Data” “Disk layout” pull-down menu
  • Turn on disk activity lights on only if disk is present in disk layout
• Disk layouts
  • Hybrid (2xSSD+4xHDD / Node)
  • All Flash (2x/4x/6x SSD / Node)
  • Hybrid with Self Encrypting Drives (SED) (2xSED SSD + 4x SED HDD / Node)
  • All Flash with Self Encrypting Drives (SED) (2x/4x/6x SED SSD / Node)
  • NVMe + SSD (2xNVMe + 4xSSD / Node
• Number of Nodes
  • 1 Node = NX-3160-G6
  • 2 Node = NX-3260-G6
  • 3 Node = NX-3360-G6
  • 4 Node = NX-3460-G6
• Disk labels are color coded
  • Light Green label = SSD
  • Light Blue label = HDD
  • Orange label = SSD (SED)
  • Black label = HDD (SED)
  • Grey label = NVMe
• Additionally with NVMe drives the disk latches are orange, with other drive types the disk latches are dark red

Using “Shape data” Window to modify the dynamic shapes

• Access “Shape Data” window (Visio 2016)
  • “View” – “Task Panes” – “Shape Data”
  • or
  • Select a shape – Right Click – “Data” – “Shape Data”

• “Shape Data” menus are also Dynamic
  • It shows only relevant info / sections
  • For example if you choose All Flash disk layout, you can only choose the size of SSD drives, no menu for HDD size
• Use pull-down menus to change the appearance of the shape

Example “Shape Data” menu

“Select Nutanix Model”  menu expanded

“Select Disk Layout” menu expanded

• Depending on your selection disk label and disk latch colors are changed
• Depending on your disk layout selection only relevant disk size menus are shown
  • • i.e if your selected disk layout contains only SSD drives, only SSD size menu is shown, no hdd size menu is shown

“Select SSD Size” menu expanded

• Depending on your selection the label text changes
• To have label just show color, not text, select the first line, empty line
• To have label show color and disk type, select the second line
• To have label show color, disk type and size, select third+ lines

 

“Select HDD Size” menu expanded

Examples

NX-3060-G6 Hybrid

• Picture: NX-3460-G6 Hybrid 

Picture: NX-3160-G6 Hybrid 

NX-3060-G6 All-Flash

• 2x / 4x / 6x SSD  per node

Picture: NX-3260-G6 All Flash, 4×3.84TB / node

Picture: NX-3360-G6 All Flash, 6×1.92TB / node

NX-3060-G6 Hybrid with Self Encrypting Drives (SED)

• 2xSSD (SED) + 4xHDD (SED) per node

Picture: NX-3460-G6 Hybrid (SED) 

NX-3060-G6 All Flash with Self Encrypting Drives (SED)

• 2x / 4x / 6x SSD (SED)

Picture: NX-3460-G6 All Flash (SED)

NX-3060-G6  NVMe + SSD

• 2xNVMe + 4xSSD / node

Picture: NX-3260-G6  NVMe + SSD 

Limitations

• The text on label is shown only when using scales from 1:2 to 1:16
  • The smallest font that Visio can render is 1pt
  • At 1:16 the disk label text font size is 1 pt
  • At 1:10 the disk  label text font size is 1.6 pt
  • At 1:20 the label text font size would have to be less than 1 pt, but Visio would render the font to be 1 pt in size and the text would not fit with in the label box
• Dynamic shapes are slower to use than the normal shapes
  • Lot’s of code associated with the shape
  • Many dynamic elements with the shape
  • The initial placement from stencil to drawing might take up to 15 seconds or more, depending how powerful your computer is
  • Once a dynamic shape has been used once in a drawing, subsequent placements from stencil to drawing are faster
• At the moment there is no logic for checking that the selected SSD and HDD combinations are actually supported configurations
  • Not such a big problem with NX-3060-G6 or models with 2.5″ drives
  • With Nutanix models using  3.5″ drives
    • your SSD size selection might limit the HDD sizes that can be used
    • or vice versa your HDD selection might limit your SSD size selection
    • For example with some NX models it is not supported to use smaller 480GB/960Gb/1.92TB SSD drives with larger 6TB/8TB/12TB HDDs
    • Nutanix documentation around this issue is bit hazy and supported disk combinations might vary between AOS releases -> Not so easy to make disk combination checks
• Dynamic shapes should also work with Visio “Blank Page” template and page setting “No Scale”. But it is highly recommended to use scaled drawings (1:2 to 1:16), as “No Scale” drawings can cause much headache and unpredictable results.

Downloads

• This was a beta version of the shape and has been superseded by a new stencil containing both front and rear view dynamic shapes, for more info please read:

  Unofficial DPTPB Nutanix Dynamic Visio Shapes: Intro

• or
• Just download the updated dynamic stencil package from Nutanix Downloads
• Sample NX-3060-G6 Dynamic Front View Shape
• Not an Official Nutanix shape
• Use at your own risk, no guarantees

Feedback

• Please leave feedback, the only way to make the shapes better, is to get feedback