NorthStar 1.5 Documentation | ||
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The NorthStar system consists of 5 main object types: Location, Owner, Device, Network, and Address Objects. All of these objects all are fully "nestable" except Owner and Address objects. When you are creating a new object you will be asked to select the template to use when creating that object. If you know the specific template to use select it, if not use the Default Template for that object.
Location Objects are one of the basic building blocks used to provide effective IP space management. Location Objects can be created to be as broad or specific as you require. Since they are nestable it is fairly easy to create a tree that starts a very broad level and can be narrowed to to specfic racks in equipment rooms. One example of this can be shown by using the following tree structure:
United States Alabama Alaska . . Oregon Eugene 123 Elm Street Datacenter Room 1 Room 2 Rack 1 Rack 2 Rack 3 Position 1 345 Pine Street Datacenter Room 1 Rack 1 Rack 2 . . Wyoming Europe France Germany Berlin 123 Elm Street Datacenter Rack 1 Rack 2 Munich United Kingdom |
Owner Objects are used to track the organization that is responsible for a particular object. Owner objects can either be departments within your company, clients with colocated equipment, clients with IP space allocated to them, or a combination of the 3. Owner objects are not nestable as this point, but, this could change in the future. Owner Objects, like Location Objects are not dependant on any other object for creation, however, Network, Address, and Device Objects all require a corresponding Owner Object.
Device Objects are used to track the physical piece of equipment that a particular netblock or address is assigned to. Device Objects are fully nestable so you can create quite complex but easily navigatable views of devices on your network. One example of a fairly complex setup could look like the following tree:
Routers Core Routers Border Routers border1.network.net Ethernet0 Serial0 . . Serial10 border2.network.net BVI1 Ethernet0 Switches Core Switches coreswitch1.network.net Ethernet0/0 Ethernet0/1 . . Ethernet0/10 Edge Switches |
Device Objects are dependent on Location and Owner Objects for creation and are required for creation of Network or Address Objects.
Network objects are used to track the assignment of networks and sub-networks to a particular Location, Device, and Owner object. When setting up your Network Objects you most likely want to work with a top-down approach. This approach takes the biggest netblock you have control of and works down from their assigned sub-networks as needed. For example let's say DataBits Inc. has a netblock of 192.168.0.0/20 assigned to it from a regional registrar or their upstream provider (yes.. I know.. 192.168.0.0 is private address space.. quit being so nit-picky ;-) ). The network administrator may setup his Network Objects to look like the following tree:
192.168.0.0/20 (Top Netblock) 192.168.0.0/21 (Dallas POP) 192.168.0.0/24 (Customer 1) 192.168.1.0/24 (Customer 2) . . 192.168.7.0/24 (Local Office Use) 192.168.8.0/21 (Austin POP) 192.168.8.0/22 (Datacenter 1) 192.168.8.0/23 (Customer 1) 192.168.10.0/23 (Local Use) 192.168.12.0/22 (Datacenter 2) 192.168.12.0/24 (Local Use) 192.168.13.0/24 (Customer 1) 192.168.14.0/24 (Customer 2) 192.168.15.0/24 (Customer 3) |
Address Objects are used to track a single IP address assignment. They require all other objects to be created first before they can be created. Address Objects are fairly simple and serve the purpose of tieing a particular device to it's assigned IP address.
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