Design Features

Original NetApp Shape Design Features

  • Physical shapes are drawn to scale and include:
    • Rack mounted equipment drawn 19 in. wide
    • Connection points on ports for connectivity
    • Designed to snap/glue into each other
    • Movable text labels that can be shown/hidden
    • Editable data properties in each object
    • Appearance changes based on property data
    • Many shapes include custom right-click menus

Additional design features for DPTPB Stencil

  • Units & Scale
    • Most of the shapes are in imperial unis (inches,feet and so on)
    • Why?
    • Because the original NetApp shapes use imperial units
    • Original NetApp shape can scaled 1:2 – 1:30
    • DPTPB Essentials is best used with 1:16 page scale
    • Using any other scale might break things as DPTPB Essential contains more information in text boxes
      • Visio font size does not scale with page scale and changing page scale can possibly make text boxes unreadable
      • There are ways around this issue, but it requires additional coding for the shape, maybe in future versions
  • Printing
    • Due to original imperial units, default paper size is also imperial (letter)
    • Slightly different dimensions than A4
    • Drawings will fit on A4, if your drawing stays within margin box
    • Avoid printing, save the forest
    • Maybe I will change this in future versions, however not this item is not very high on my “to-do” list, as modern printers are fairly good at scaling content to match paper size
  • Shape Data and Descriptions
    • Shape names and descriptions are stored as data within the shape
    • Text boxes displaying information contain fields and are linked to data
    • While text in text boxes is editable manually, it is not recommended as it might break the connection with the shape data
    • Most of the shapes have “Properties” entry in right-click menu and shape data and text displayed can be changed this way
    • “Shape Data” Window is your friend here, it works even if right-click menu does not have “Properties” entry
  • Front View:
    • Uses 42U-48U racks
    • Wide variants for some racks
    • All devices shown with device type and device name
    • Maximum six racks / page
    • Racks run from left to right (1,2,3,4,5,6)
  • Rear View:
    • General
      • Logical presentation of devices and cabling
      • Much more details than Synergy Visio outputs
      • Devices are stacked in correct order, but vertical/horizontal spacing is not in scale
      • This design decision was made to make room for more information
      • Maximum two racks / page
      • Racks run from right to left (2,1)
    • Cabling
      • Cables are color coded and/or use different cable ends for different purposes
      • Aim is not to run two similar cables side by side
      • Try to minimize crossing cables
    • Device Grouping
      • Devices of same type (SAS disk shelf stacks, controller, networking devices) are grouped with a box in order to make the drawing more readable
      • Devices within grouping box are labeled and can be named
    • Port Assignments
      • Text Boxes within Device Group Boxes
      • Shows correct end-point ports for cables
      • Slot and Port assignments are mostly following NetApp best practices available at hwu.netapp.com
      • Port assignments vary based on controller model
        • Use correct version for controller model
      • SAS port assignments are a modification of NetApp best practice, more information further in documentation
      • Front-End LAN / SAN switch side port assignments are customer provided, usually we don’t know which ports are to be used in front-end switches
        • However include Front-End LAN/SAN in the drawing so customer can allocate switch ports