Draw.io – Free Modelling Tool

One of the many tasks of a DBA, is to create documentation or designing your (new) environment. Last week, I started this journey myself. Normally I would use Microsoft Office Visio, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get myself a license for that, and I didn’t want to use a trial version. So what other options do you have then?

In my quest to find a free to use modelling tool, I found draw.io. It’s a free online modelling tool, with an amazing amount of options!

If you open the link, the web application will load. Once it’s loaded, you see a blank drawing. In this blank drawing, you can add your shapes, texts, etc.

You can click on General in the left column to collapse it, and then right-click on General. Now a menu will pop up that allows you to add more shapes to the menu:

 
For example, if you add the Rack shapes to the menu, you’re able to add all kinds of server rack images to your diagram. For example the racks from Dell:

 
So as you can see, there are a lot of possibilities when you use draw.io. And if you ask me, it’s a good alternative if you need to draw up a diagram quickly, and don’t have Visio installed.