Hi everyone! I'm relatively new on the job, and my company is preparing to transition our data center to a colocation facility. We currently have over 250 virtual machines running on VMware, but our documentation is quite poor. I'm responsible for organizing everything, and I'm looking for advice or templates that could help improve our documentation process. I'm currently using a PowerShell script to compile data into an Excel file that includes details like local accounts, admin accounts, RDP accounts, services, installed programs, and firewall traffic checks. I want to create a centralized document, preferably in Excel, to gather all this information. Any suggestions?
2 Answers
I highly recommend checking out MkDocs for your documentation needs. It can really streamline everything. You could automate the data collection from routers, switches, and firewalls, or even better, consider tools like SolarWinds and Splunk to build dashboards and analyze logs. This way, you avoid the hassle of manual documentation, which can be a nightmare with so many systems. You can automate CSV generation and pull all the necessary data without the drift that'll happen when things are updated manually. Using PlantUML diagrams generated from this automated data can also help visualize your entire network and systems. You might also want to implement something like Zeek for network metadata capture, which feeds into your central logging system. This approach will offer real-time insights into your infrastructure, making it much easier to manage compliance and vulnerabilities.
Are you considering using RV Tools? It's a handy utility for fetching basic info on your VMs such as performance metrics, disk usage, OS versions, names, and network card details. It helps get the foundational data you need quickly without a lot of hassle.
Yeah, I'm already using RV Tools for gathering those basics! It’s been quite helpful.