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Topology Layout Pane

On the Topology Overview pane, click Layout and select a container component from the topology on the right panel to edit layout hints of multiple device(s) in the Topology Layout pane.

Figure 1. Topology Layout Pane

Topology automatically tries to guess a layout with specified containers and roles for your devices based on their connectivity and advertised LLDP capabilities. However, you might sometimes find that the automatic categorization is incorrect, or you simply want a custom layout different from what was originally envisioned. The Layout pane lets you override the automatic categorizations and control the layout more directly.

The layout works on the basis of hints that describe the role of a device, whether it exists within a datacenter or campus network, and where it should go in that network. Devices with similar roles and positions in the hierarchy are grouped together. Parallel hierarchies like network pods or racks are created if different names are used.

Examples

  • A device named athens is a datacenter leaf switch, but it has no rack server connections yet and is miscategorized as an edge switch. You can click on athens and then select Node type as leaf to force it to take on a leaf role. It moves into the leaf position inside its datacenter hierarchy.

  • To partition your network into New York and San Francisco datacenters, multi-select the devices or containers that must go in the New York datacenter, type New York in the Datacenter field, and confirm it. Repeat the same process for San Francisco. Now, your network is divided between these two datacenters, and you can expand or collapse New York and San Francisco datacenters independently to view only one datacenter at a time.

This pane provides the following selections:

  • Network type drop-down menu - Select the network type that most closely matches your network arrangement. It provides the following options:

    • Campus - Devices are manually arranged in containers for different buildings and floors. It provides the following options:

      • Node type drop-down menu - Select the preferred device type or roles.

      • Building drop-down menu - Select the building name that the selected device preferred to be placed into.

      • Floor drop-down menu - Select the preferred floor number in the selected building.

      • Devices drop-down menu (Optional) - Set a name to be used to group devices in the selected floor.

    • Datacenter - Aspine-and-leaf type layout is used and devices are arranged into pods and racks. It provides the following options:

      • Node Type drop-down menu - Select the preferred device type or roles.

      • Pod drop-down menu - Select the pod name that the selected device preferred to be placed into.

        Note: Devices in different pods of the same datacenter appear in different pod containers that can be expanded and collapsed independently.

      • Rack drop-down menu - Select the name of a rack similar to pod.

  • Show Advanced - Click to view the Skip Auto-Generated Classifications drop-down menu.

    Note: Click Hide Advanced to hide the Skip Auto-Generated Classifications drop-down menu. If the Skip Auto-Generated Classifications option is enabled, CVP does not automatically identifies the device(s). Only manually-provided layout hints affect the layout of the selected device(s).

  • Set all to Auto - Use the automatic layout classification exclusively; all manually-specified layout hints are removed from selected devices.

  • Save button - Click to save latest changes.