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?"

Comments

Uhh, the usuals?

[toleraen]

Word+visio.

Of course the person creating the drawings and documents must be proficient in technical writing (aka not an idiot), because no matter what tools you have, if you don't know how to explain things, they'll be useless. Try to get your documentation peer reviewed to make sure it makes sense.

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

Enjoy :)

Use a Wiki

[Silver Sloth]

The biggest problem with documenation is that we're all too busy keeping the systems running to write up what we did. It therefore is neccessary to use a system where

• It's easy to amend/update
• Access is controllable
• The content is searchable

All this screams Wiki to me. If you're capable of setting up the sort of VMWare system you describe then installing Wikimedia will be a piece of cake.

Media Wiki

[RingDev]

I'm working hard at convincing my management to impliment a Wikipedia style documentation system. I've demoed some of the possibilities and it looks like a great tool for it. So good that I've recently installed Media Wiki for another large company looking for a documentation system. For its ease of use, configurability, and built in functionality, it is truely a great tool.

Now if I can just convince the last supervisor that Media Wiki is better than MS Word with Track Changes turned on (shudder!).

-Rick