How Do You Handle Your Enterprise Documentation?

An anonymous reader wonders: "I'm curious as to what tools Slashdot readers use to inventory and document their networks? What got me thinking about this is the part VMWare has been taking in data centers. You've got your SAN, various physical and logical networks, various VMs, and so forth. It just adds a new layer of complexity in terms of documentation. I'm curious as to what people have been using as for doing things like documenting how their backups work, LAN settings, FW settings, where and what runs what services, and so forth. How do you blueprint your entire IT infrastructure so that someone brand new could start and figure out what does what?"

Just order it from amazon

[T.Hobbes]

I tried organizing textfiles for all the chapters and gifs, but it's much easier to just fork over the money and pay for the printed version. Paper makes for easier reading and browsing, too, like with any other book.

Amazon has it for $25 here:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Generation-Technic al-Manual/dp/0671704273 [amazon.com]

Enjoy :)

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Documentation? Think of your job security!

[Opportunist]

Generally, you'll be hard pressed to get techs to document anything. Simple reason: If it was documented, anyone could find the junk again. Not just them.

It's our way of securing out jobs. If you want a CD or want to know what this button does, hell, ask. You can even call us at home, even in the middle of the night, we won't even get too mad if you throw us out of our cozy beds at 10am with a call, but don't ever dare to question our way of organising things. If you ask a tech where the documentation is, he'll tip his temple and say "here".

That way you can't fire him. In today's corporate world, it's an essential job security thing to NOT document. If you have to document it, write it down and then reshuffle everything.

Sorry to be not too helpful, but that's simply how it is. At least for me. And now excuse me, I need to hunt down that (censored) tech, I need an MS-Office CD.

OB

[Mipoti Gusundar]

I am just looking it up at wery fine book u can buy here [amazon.com].

Re:Easy!

[chris_mahan]

While I completely agree with you, I now know why your nick is SatanicPuppy. Winy yet Evil.

Re:no, it's called job security....

[camperdave]

If you're irreplaceable, you get promoted by declaration:

Power goes out in the building...

"Hey! You know Larry, the pimply faced kid who fixes the computer stuff? Well, there's a new sign on his door that says 'Network Administrator', and he's got a parking spot now.".

Larry goes on vacation, comes back...

"Hey, Remember Larry, the network administrator. Yeah, he's now 'Director of Information Technology', whatever that means. Yeah, corner office and everything."

Team of Efficiency experts brought in to improve work flow...

"Hey, did you hear? Larry got canned. No, not that Larry, the computer Larry. Turns out he was, how did they say it, 'holding the corporate infrastructure hostage'. The boss said my idea about getting those consultants in will save them big bucks. Guess who has the corner office now, baby!"

Re:Easy!

[chris_mahan]

Oh, as an aside, my boss said he had a problem. For our goals, he has to reduce the number of tickets filed against our applications by 40% next year, in order to meet his achievements benchmark. The problem? We only had 1 ticket filed last year against our applications.