Network Configuration Manager offers a flexible and dynamic way to efficiently segment the management of devices in your network, through the use of Sites and Views. Sites and Views allows you to implement and manage device containers within your network that best reflects your management needs.
| Sites |
Allows you to segment device management physically, by a geographical location |
| Views |
Allows you to segment your devices by technology type, vendor, departmental responsibility, or any other preferred logical segmentation |
In this way, each user with the proper Network Configuration Manager network credentials can customize the way they organize and access devices in the network.
Sites
Regardless of the number of networks you construct in your Network Configuration Manager environment, Sites and Views provide you with the ability to physically or logically segment the devices contained within each network. Sites, as the name indicates, reflects a physical, geographic segmentation of devices.
To track the physical location of managed devices for asset tracking, maintenance or repair purposes, or just work better with devices organized in a physical relationship, implement Sites within Network Configuration Manager.
Views
Views provide a logical segmentation of devices, meaning there is no need for a physical relationship to exist between devices within a View.
If you operate across geographical boundaries, and segment network management responsibilities by technology or vendor, you will find that Views will address the need for device organization. However, it's likely that a combination of both Sites and Views will be the most effective method for providing the flexibility to manage network environments.
How Sites and View Work
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Sites are constructed in a hierarchy. As such, sites can contain other sites, as well as devices. There exists an explicit order to site relationships determined by the site type.
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By using the site Hierarchy, you can diagram the physical relationships devices have with one another. Sites provides a "snapshot" allowing you to focus on any part in the network. You can then segment the site to allocate devices into sub-sites. For example, the following is a site hierarchy, and the possible site type relationships.
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This example indicates that your devices are divided into four possible geographical locations: United States (Primary Site), Dallas (sub-site1), New York (sub-site2), and Atlanta (sub-site3).
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Within Dallas, the devices have been further segmented to the exact rack location, and in Atlanta, the devices have been segmented to the room where the devices are located. In this hierarchy, New York's relationships remain hidden.
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In the example, notice the duplication of the 13th floor being used. When naming sites, you cannot use duplicate names when the types are on the same level in the hierarchy. However, it is permissible to duplicate a name, when in separate site levels .
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Also, note that all site types were not used in either Dallas or Atlanta. In the Dallas site, a room has not been indicated. In Atlanta, a rack is not indicated. This is to emphasize the ability to create the site types that best reflect your locations.
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As each site is diagrammed, note that the physical layout of a site does affect the logical connections of devices.
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Views have no relationship to one another as they contain flat, and sometimes unrelated groupings of devices. As such, views have no relational hierarchy in a network. However, for organizational purposes, views are maintained in a folder structure within a network. In this way, for example, you could create a vendor folder named Cisco ™, containing sub-folders for routers models, each of which would contain views holding routers sorted by connection type. For example, Frame, ATM, or Point-to-Point.
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Sites and Views are designed as public, or shared containers under each network. As such, any Network Configuration Manager user with view access to a network can access and see the sites and views created in that network. There is one default view created for all networks called the All Devices view. It is a view created to provide a single reference to all devices in a network.
