Documenting a group of servers

[w1z4rd]

Whats the best way to deal with creating documentation for say.. 100 servers? Basically I have being told to document all the servers I currently manage.. and I was wondering what the best way to go about this is?

 

[dotnerd]

just create a simple inventory containing the hardware components, software, licensing, roles and operational importance of this server. eg. lvl 3-std, 2-important, 1-critical, 0-crucial.

I just did it this way

 

[bekdik]

http://www.solarwinds.com/products/lansurveyor/

might be useful. Note it needs visio

 

[Nod]

If you are using Windows, you could use a few commands to give you an inventory of hardware, OS, software, etc.
A command with some basic info is:

WMIC /Node:<remotecomputer> ComputerSystem Get UserName

Software I have used before for, is WinAudit:

WinAudit is easy to use, no special knowledge is required to use the programme. It is a self-contained single file that needs no installation or configuration. It can be run from a floppy disk or USB stick. Simply download the programme and double click on it. User interface translations have been kindly contributed by several people, if possible WinAudit will automatically start in your language.

The programme reports on virtually every aspect of computer inventory and configuration. Results are displayed in web-page format, categorised for ease of viewing and text searching. Whether your interest is in software compliance, hardware inventory, technical support, security or just plain curiosity, WinAudit has it all. The programme has advanced features such as service tag detection, hard-drive failure diagnosis, network port to process mapping, network connection speed, system availability statistics as well as Windows® update and firewall settings.

WinAudit is free, you can use it in your commercial applications and distribute it freely to anyone. The programme requires neither installation nor configuration. Its small size and ability to create formatted emails means you can audit just about any Windows® based personal computer.

You can also write to a database instead of file, which makes it possible to create some nice stats. More info here.

WinAudit.exe connects to databases using Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) and this ANSI version has been validated on:

dBase™ 5
Firebird® 1.5/2.0
Microsoft® Visual FoxPro® 6
Microsoft® Access 97/2000/2007
Microsoft® SQL Server 6.5/2005
MySQL® 3.23 and 4.1
Oracle® 10
Paradox® 5.0
SQLite 3

There are many databases and ODBC drivers on the market so WinAudit adjusts its behaviour to suit the capabilities of the database/driver combination. In theory, WinAudit should work in any database that has a Level 3 ODBC driver.

For Linux I couldn't find much. Only this, this and this.
If you need network discovery software, a free one (for windows) is "The Dude".

 

[shadow_man]

We use Nagios to monitor all our servers...http://www.nagios.org/

J

 

[MyWorld]

What needs to be documented? Specs and importance? How detailed should the specs then be?