Documenting rack, servers, drives, CPU, RAM etc
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I'm setting up our servers that are going into colo. Do you have any favorite tools for documenting the hardware?
If something fails I'd like to know what it was so I can get a replacement. There are 20 servers in total but they are all in the same rack. There are a total of 120 drive bays and I'd like to keep track what bays have disks and what kind of disks. Also expansion cards, what memory and cpu each server has. Server themselves are identical on the outside but different internally. Serial numbers and warranty is also interesting to keep track of.
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We use a mix of spreadsheet and visual layout (at the new office) I'll see if I can get a copy of the template,.. but it is very outlined with the idea that you have everything listed.
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It's rare we need much more than just a wiki. If we do, Visio or LibreOffice Draw do the trick.
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and pictures, don't forget to take picture if you are racking the gear, easier to identify to remote support personal.
One thing I've done: we're reducing the number of servers in colo so I've been able to move to a color coded label on each one for remote hands-on to aid in identifying (Red labeled server, blue labeled server, etc) -
Visio is great for this. There are lots of stencil kits out there that are free for various vendors.
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So I asked... seems it's a 'highly' formatted Excel spreadsheet..
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@gjacobse said in Documenting rack, servers, drives, CPU, RAM etc:
So I asked... seems it's a 'highly' formatted Excel spreadsheet..
those are the best kind.
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Thanks guys.
I have Visio but use it mostly as a drawing tool. However having looked closer at it now, I see that it will work fine for documentation as it's very easy to add data columns into every object. It can also be connected directly to a database / spread sheet if needed.
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I use https://www.draw.io/ and I know a tool that @stacksofplates recommended for Cloud Diagrams.
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@dbeato said in Documenting rack, servers, drives, CPU, RAM etc:
I use https://www.draw.io/ and I know a tool that @stacksofplates recommended for Cloud Diagrams.
Draw.io recently implemented one that looks almost identical to the one I was using so I've been playing with that. The other was cloudcraft.co.
For rack diagrams, phpIPAM isnt too bad. And you get the benefit of IPAM software with it.
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@stacksofplates said in Documenting rack, servers, drives, CPU, RAM etc:
@dbeato said in Documenting rack, servers, drives, CPU, RAM etc:
I use https://www.draw.io/ and I know a tool that @stacksofplates recommended for Cloud Diagrams.
Draw.io recently implemented one that looks almost identical to the one I was using so I've been playing with that. The other was cloudcraft.co.
For rack diagrams, phpIPAM isnt too bad. And you get the benefit of IPAM software with it.
Draw.io is in NextCloud too.
