How to make the technical documentation beautiful.....

It's no secret that one of the fundamental parts of system administration is to write and maintain up to date technical documentation. It helps to be clear about that at all administration. Depending on the purpose and size of enterprise / technical documentation may look different: a small company this could be a description of stuffing a pair of servers / computers, planning a wired network, two or three Svicha and description org.technology. All this fits on a pair of A4 sheets. And when you need to quickly understand, for example, a client which port on a patch panel is connected, or as the trunk line, there are endless flipping of the most Talmud. Of course, what I would suggest further, does not cancel the existence of such documentation, in the good of its presence is mandatory. I only propose to optimize its performance, visualize, if you want. In large organizations, where a lot of servers / computers, large networks - is the Talmud.So what can we do?Combed the Internet, I stumbled on 2 projects : RackTables and RackSmith. Both products are web-based and fully managed out of it. Ie to deploy some of the products we need a server that has Apache, PHP and MySQL. I shall warn: if you think that this software will simplify your process of creating / writing documentation - it is not. Much easier (and logical) to work with such programs, when everything is on paper (or other media).

What do RackTables and RackSmith?

The whole point is that you create some kind of database of their inventory with the parameters of the equipment itself: where it is located (city, street, house, building, floor, room, unit in the rack / cabinet), why and how it is connected (including the ip addresses and MAC addresses) and what role performs. Agree, it is convenient to a couple of clicks to get comprehensive information about a particular device in your network.

How to install or RackTables RackSmith?

As I wrote above, all you need to program start, - a web-server with Apache, PHP and MySQL. On Web sites, developers have the installation instructions. But the site RackTables instruction is outdated and did not seem relevant to new versions. The files are copied to a directory of apache. Continue the installation process goes through a web-based interface, simple and understandable. In any case, if something goes wrong, you will write about it. I have no problems, everything went like clockwork, and with one product, and others.

What is the difference between RackTables and RackSmith?

By and large differences in the ideology of any products. In my opinion, the main difference in functionality is that RackSmith can not do reporting, and RackTables can. And, of course, the main difference is the interface.I thought, at RackSmith it is much friendlier + bribed a thing that you can paste into your workspace layouts, maps, etc. (Actually, any images PNG, GIF, JPG sizes up to 1000x1000). For example, to show all the buildings in the territory, I have copied from YandeksKarty shot from the satellite and already there primapil I needed objects.

Summary

Of course, to decide in the end - you need it or not - only you, but I think it is convenient. As for the food, I opted for RackSmith (still bribed interface)