Bring order into IT environment in chaos
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Faced with an working IT environment in chaos (undocumented, unpatched, where's the backups, what licenses are there, what warranties, vendors, what servers are in use, what apps etc, etc).
What steps would you take to get things in order as quickly as possible?
And in what order would you do it?
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@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
Faced with an working IT environment in chaos (undocumented, unpatched, where's the backups, what licenses are there, what warranties, vendors, what servers are in use, what apps etc, etc).
What steps would you take to get things in order as quickly as possible?
And in what order would you do it?
1- Figure out what your current state is
- Automated inventory / scan (glpi / lansweeper / openaudit etc...)
- Physical inventory to ensure that nothing in the automated inventory was missed
2- Establish priorities with the stakeholders, depending on what your inventory / audit finds.
- Prioritize what's needed to ensure that the business can continue, this doesn't always line up with what we as IT might want to have updated at first glance. (business can continue on W7, missing backups of an accounting suite could kill some small businesses)
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Start with getting some documentation in place so you can document a system overview of the environment that includes who is owner of that specific system (Admins, Vendors), what's the system is used for, user(s) who you would escalate issues to and include the equipment too.
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Document what is there- find passwords and ownerships of certs, accounts,.. and statuses.
When do contracts end and what needs to be upgraded.
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I agree with the others. You start by documenting what you have (and in that effort, create your system of future documentation). Once that's done, then you can triage. Likely I would start with patching the most vulnerable, followed by knowing your licensing state.
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@notverypunny @black3dynamite @gjacobse @EddieJennings
Thanks guys!
Are there any cloud software suitable to make the customer inventory/documentation in that would fit SMB price range?
It doesn't make sense for the customer to pay for a full fledged asset management solution with ticketing and every other possible module. But it makes sense to have the documentation in some central location.
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@pete-s there is SnipeIT
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@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
Faced with an working IT environment in chaos (undocumented, unpatched, where's the backups, what licenses are there, what warranties, vendors, what servers are in use, what apps etc, etc).
What steps would you take to get things in order as quickly as possible?
And in what order would you do it?
What are they willing to pay you to do? What's your contract say?
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@pete-s take a look at https://snipeitapp.com/ for inventory/documentation and possibly https://www.bookstackapp.com/ as a documentation wiki.
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@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@notverypunny @black3dynamite @gjacobse @EddieJennings
Thanks guys!
Are there any cloud software suitable to make the customer inventory/documentation in that would fit SMB price range?
It doesn't make sense for the customer to pay for a full fledged asset management solution with ticketing and every other possible module. But it makes sense to have the documentation in some central location.
Depends of course on your price range. Teclib does hosted glpi https://www.glpi-network.cloud/ pricing shows as 19 euro / tech / mth. Unless I missed something snipe is all manual entry whereas glpi does agent-based automatic inventory. Also has a KB, ticketing and financials baked in. GLPI stands for Gestionnaire Libre de Parc Informatique (roughly translated: Free Data Centre Manager). You could also run it on-prem, just requires a basic LAMP setup.
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I've used DokuWiki in the past for documentation.
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@notverypunny said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@notverypunny @black3dynamite @gjacobse @EddieJennings
Thanks guys!
Are there any cloud software suitable to make the customer inventory/documentation in that would fit SMB price range?
It doesn't make sense for the customer to pay for a full fledged asset management solution with ticketing and every other possible module. But it makes sense to have the documentation in some central location.
Depends of course on your price range. Teclib does hosted glpi https://www.glpi-network.cloud/ pricing shows as 19 euro / tech / mth. Unless I missed something snipe is all manual entry whereas glpi does agent-based automatic inventory. Also has a KB, ticketing and financials baked in. GLPI stands for Gestionnaire Libre de Parc Informatique (roughly translated: Free Data Centre Manager). You could also run it on-prem, just requires a basic LAMP setup.
I had a look at that when you mentioned it before. It looks promising. I'm looking to step up our own documentation as well and I like the rack feature especially.
https://glpi-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/dcim_racks-1.jpg
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@obsolesce said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
Faced with an working IT environment in chaos (undocumented, unpatched, where's the backups, what licenses are there, what warranties, vendors, what servers are in use, what apps etc, etc).
What steps would you take to get things in order as quickly as possible?
And in what order would you do it?
What are they willing to pay you to do? What's your contract say?
I'm in an advisory position only in this case. We're not looking to do that kind of work but I'd like to give them an overview of what they need.
Tools to use is of some interest to ourselves as well though. I want to improve what we're doing in that area.
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@eddiejennings said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
I've used DokuWiki in the past for documentation.
Yes, me too. But for this customer I will suggest they get something that is cloud based. And a little more specifically made for the purpose.
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@black3dynamite said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@pete-s take a look at https://snipeitapp.com/ for inventory/documentation and possibly https://www.bookstackapp.com/ as a documentation wiki.
Thanks! The hosted option might fit the bill.
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@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@eddiejennings said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
I've used DokuWiki in the past for documentation.
Yes, me too. But for this customer I will suggest they get something that is cloud based. And a little more specifically made for the purpose.
I can't find a good cloud based wiki. Either they suck or they are crazy expensive.
Running Dokuwiki (or better somethingn like Wiki.js) on a cloud IaaS instance is often better.
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@scottalanmiller said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@eddiejennings said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
I've used DokuWiki in the past for documentation.
Yes, me too. But for this customer I will suggest they get something that is cloud based. And a little more specifically made for the purpose.
I can't find a good cloud based wiki. Either they suck or they are crazy expensive.
That has been my experience also
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I really enjoy using Notion. Everything is a "page" so you can link pages and embed pages. They have templates for a ton of stuff. It's a really powerful tool.
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@stacksofplates said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
I really enjoy using Notion. Everything is a "page" so you can link pages and embed pages. They have templates for a ton of stuff. It's a really powerful tool.
One of my clients is using ClickUp. I just started putting documentation for them into that. It seems to not be very organized for that though. Does good for tasks.
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@jaredbusch said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@scottalanmiller said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@pete-s said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
@eddiejennings said in Bring order into IT environment in chaos:
I've used DokuWiki in the past for documentation.
Yes, me too. But for this customer I will suggest they get something that is cloud based. And a little more specifically made for the purpose.
I can't find a good cloud based wiki. Either they suck or they are crazy expensive.
That has been my experience also
Confluence is quite good. Free for under 10 users, too.
