Racked Hardware Visualization Tool

rackview is a tool for visualizing the layout of rack-mounted equipment. It can load data either from database tables or from a flatfile.

The purpose of this tool is to assist in planning and tracking of hardware changes to racks in a data center, and to provide a host-oriented interface into other database tools. For example, the Open Source Development Labs tie this in with their project and testing service databases.

The core of rackview is implemented as a Perl module so that it can be integrated with a variety of different kinds of tools. Sample commandline and CGI scripts are included, which should be sufficient for basic needs.

The CGI tool is suitable for use as a handler for an imagemap type of interface; an example of this is included as well as an explanation of how it was done. Any drawing tool could be used to produce the imagemap; this example was created using Sodipodi, an open source 2D scalable vector graphics drawing program that runs on Linux and Windows.

Rackview is now available to all Gentoo users through the packages tree. If you use Gentoo, you can install it by simply typing `emerge rackview'.

This release replaces several internal modules with use of Eidetic as a dependency. This is expected to cause some breakage, so if you run into trouble installing, stick with 0.06. There are no major feature differences for rackview for 0.06 to 0.07 other than the change to use Eidetic.

This release includes the minor feature addition of being able to apply a header/footer to rackview-generated pages. It is available for download from SourceForge.

Kees Cook has done a ton of work on rackview, adding several new features:

• Per-frame summary of heat/cooling (with frame_heat=1/0 or heat=1/0)
• Per-rack summary of heat/cooling controlled with rack_heat=1/0
• Can optionally be run with frame=... instead of rack_ids=...
• Uses a 1U image for spacing allowing html2ps to format correctly
• html2ps can be used to automate the printing of many racks!
• Display of warnings can be turned on via warn=1/0
• Alphabetical list of machines in a frame appended via alpha=1/0
• All options (except frame/rack_ids) have defaults in rackview.conf
• U-Mark Rulers can be shown on the left & right via umark=1/0

Release 0.05 is available for download.