Chapter 2
Documenting and Archiving Change
You can't always trust people to update documentation. Opening Visio, Excel, or whatever
program you use for documentation can be more time-consuming than simply making the change
and forgetting about it. Unfortunately, a lack of updated documentation will result in a cascade
of poor change decisions later.
The beautiful network diagram someone spent 3 weeks making is the least likely to be updated when
changes occur. Try to keep documentation as utilitarian as possible so that changes can be
incorporated more easily.
The solution to lazy documentation is to employ a tool that can automatically provide
documentation for you. The tool should be triggered to scan device configurations whenever a
change is made and to scan on a regular basis--just in case some change occurs outside your
regular change-management process. The tool should save change histories to a searchable
database, allowing you to construct a history of what has happened to each device on your
network. The tool should also help maintain documentation, such as device IP addresses, serial
numbers, and other basic information. Additional tools might be able to automatically scan your
network and construct network diagrams based on the devices and subnets that the tool finds.
These tools provide an invaluable, efficient way to automatically create accurate documentation
for your network configuration.
In short, take documentation out of your process as much as possible and make it an automated
function that occurs in the background. Figure 2.10 shows how this provides useful, accurate
input to the overall change-management process without requiring specific action on the part of
administrators.
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Summary :
Chapter 2 Documenting and Archiving Change You can't always trust people to update documentation. The solution to lazy documentation is to employ a tool that can automatically provide documentation for you. The tool should be triggered to scan device configurations whenever a change is made and to scan on a regular basis--just in case some change occurs outside your regular change-management process.
Tags :
documentation,change,network,tool,scan,automatically,process,deice,changemanagement,accurate,updated,tools,occurs