
Ask HN: What do you use as network diagram software? - polote
I start to have a lot of services and servers running in my company, and I hardly remember every programs which runs on each server.<p>Also I would like to indicate dependencies and responsibilities of each server, can you recommend such tool except Google Draw ?<p>Thanks
======
runjake
For over a decade, I've used Omnigraffle on macOS.

[https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle](https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle)

They have an excellent stencil repository:

[https://stenciltown.omnigroup.com/](https://stenciltown.omnigroup.com/)

... including stuff like Cisco stencils, if that's your thing.

[https://stenciltown.omnigroup.com/search?q=cisco](https://stenciltown.omnigroup.com/search?q=cisco)

------
jonny_storm
Though this in no way addresses your question, I hope it may still be of use.

I regularly create extremely information-dense graphs for highly distributed,
stateful systems. The result is effectively a high-level specification for
effecting some critical set of global behaviors. Lower-level details may then
be represented in subsequent diagrams, but these rarely convey much insight
beyond what tabular data can. Indeed, tabular data is readily amenable to
computation, allowing relationships to be queried without manually consulting
a diagram.

For distributed services, simple (name, URI) tuples can be associated with
their respective dependencies in a database or document. This flat, non-
overlapping structure ensures dependencies always remain easy to identify, no
matter how complex they become. IPC dependencies can be documented in a
similar way, and even indirect dependencies, such as when one program writes
some data which another program must read, are easily obtained from lists of
adjacencies.

Crucially, storing dependencies as data does not preclude visualization but
makes it possible to generate a wealth of visualizations without manual
intervention. Consider that even an intermediate graph representation, such as
dot, does not force you to use GraphViz, and the simple adjacency list format
is easily parsed and reformatted for use with other tools.

All that said, I do use Visio for the aforesaid design specification style of
diagrams. I find every other program out there to be endlessly frustrating for
my use case. But if I need to document some system in full, I do so with data
to ensure it can be monitored, verified, or simply queried.

Best of luck to you!

------
tbirrell
yEd Graph Editor

[https://www.yworks.com/products/yed](https://www.yworks.com/products/yed)
[https://www.yworks.com/products/yed/download](https://www.yworks.com/products/yed/download)

------
motiw
I discovered draw.io few days ago, and used it, looks promising

------
chefkoch
Perhabs stating the obvious but Visio?

