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

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.