Here's a little freebie from Microsoft for those of you who have the job of drawing out infrastructure diagrams of SQL Server farms. Ok that already sounds like a pretty niche market. How about here's a little freebie from Microsoft for those of you that should have diagrams of your SQL Server Infrastructure but don't have the time... Ah yes. That old chestnut. Well help is at hand in the form of a (relatively) new add-in to Visio 2007 that is free download from the mighty M$ here.
To cut a fairly dull story short basically there is a read-me in the download that will tell you all your pre-requisites (.net 2.0 and some dlls that I just hope are installed when I installed visio) and also give a pretty thorough overview of the tool and how to use it.
However, to show you how easy it is to use here is my not so thorough version.
Step 1: Fire up Visio Start/All Programs/...
<No Picture for this>
Step 2: Look to the top!
Step 3: Go Configure
<No Picture for this either>
Step 4: A Wizard! Shock ... Horror
Clicking Next about now would be a good thing
Step 5: Your Servers .. Count em
Think of a number...
Again Next is recommended at this point
Step 6: Things start to get interesting
- Pick your Server (Slightly ropey ordering I have to say)
- Identify your SQL Server Version (Oh it's already got SQL Server 2008... nice touch)
- OS is next... Windows 2008 I think (and now things don't look so clever) Beta 3? We've RTM'ed here luv.
- Finally SQL Edition. Oh dear Developer Edition only. I have had a play about here with these settings and I can't get it off developer edition in this drop down for SQL 2008.
Then you Click Save and do it for the next server. You'll get asked if you really meant that in a Vista stylee but hey ho that's the way of the world nowadays.
N.B. A few little pecularities emerge.
If you want to select a cluster be very sure to select at least two servers before progressing to select sql server versions. If you fail to do this you will not be able to select the "Enable Clusters for SQL Servers" check box that I have cunningly hidden with my drop down for Step 6.
Step 6a the clustering checkbox revealed....
Ooo look at that! Nodes a plenty and storage options too..
Step 7 Repeat until complete
<No Picture just keep going until you are allowed to hit next>
Then hit Next >
Step 8 Time for the Summary
A screen that performs next to no real purpose other than showing off my affinity for Enterprise Edition. I guess you could delete records but after spending that time putting in all that info why ever would you want to do that...
Click Next > (Please let it end)
Step 9 Sweet Relief
Visio is finally doing some work and we are about to see the fruits of our labour...
Step 10 We must be there now!
Sadly not. Unfortunately, I require a screen to tell me that Visio hasn't crashed.
Out of morbid curiosity I press close
Step 11 The Reveal
And there you have it. In only 11 easy steps...
Notice that by clicking on a shape and looking at the shape data out pops all that metadata we spent ages adding in. The good news is that this data is totally amendable so I can RTM my windows 2008 server which my clients will be pleased about.
Anyways if you fancy a play you can always download a copy yourself. It is better than nothing I wouldn't say by much but it is an albeit small step in making Visio useful to a much wider audience. I find only Microsoft Project to be more unwieldy than Visio. Perhaps that's just me...
Visio needs shapes and addin's like this in my view that anyone can download and install. The frustrating thing I find is that it could be such a useful tool - but often it just winds me up.
It would also be a lot more useful if it was updated to have all the latest and greatest Server OS and SQL Server combinations. Given how new this download is I'd say it's a shame that it's content is already out of date.
Cheers, JRJ
Link:
The software : http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=779561DE-C704-4584-80AC-7E4348C927C0&displaylang=en