Accidents happen all the time. People get hurt. Even seemingly young vibrant people can tragically get cut down in the prime of their lives. As a company, what if this happened to your main computer engineer. Your computer dude just got hit by a truck. Do you have all the information another engineer needs to continue in the footsteps of the previous guy? Do you have all the passwords? Do you know how your servers are configured if you have to rebuild them? If your server went down, could you rebuild it? Do you know all the relevant configuration settings your servers and applications need? It is with these questions in mind that the best documentation is created. Of course the trick with network documentation is to do it before you need it. If your server is down, it is impossible to document.
The problem with network documentation is that it is incredibly boring. Engineers moan when thinking about doing documentation all day.
Luckily I have discovered and have began work with an excellent utility that provides very detailed, nicely formatted documentation automatically. This utility is called SYDI. Unfortunately, it will not do everything. Passwords must be added in additional documentation but the documents can detail the configuration of the computer it is run on.
SYDI can be run in two main modes. One mode is run locally on a single machine. This mode creates a Microsoft Word detailing, in excruciating intricacy, the configuration of the machine. Typically this document ranges from 30 to 50 pages long. I run this mode on servers for maximum detail. The other mode is run over the network and details network configuration, software inventory and such in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I typically run this mode on all the workstations in a network. These output files can be used as is or changed to suit your needs and easily updated by rerunning the utility.
Setting up and running the software on a single machine is simply a matter of running a script and defining where you want the output file created. Running the utility across a network is a different matter. It requires making specific changes to an .XML file and changing a myriad of command line options as appropriate for your environment. Once this is done however, updating your base documentation is a simple matter.
This utility does not remove all the tedious work in creating your network documentation but makes it more palatable for your engineer and maybe even a little bit of fun. Have your network engineer try SYDI today or contact Earl Consulting Services for assistance.
