Critical documentation in data center transformation

Documentation is often neglected in IT work. When administrators install, configure, repair or optimize data centers, time is often very tight because they need to concentrate when doing these tasks. But if you are faced with data center upgrades and renovations, you will find out how important documentation is, especially the structure diagram of a data center.

Data center documentation is crucial during fault recovery. After a fault occurs, you may need to recreate the same environment. Documentation is also crucial during remote assistance. You can imagine that when a remote engineer is working remotely, there is no data center documentation. He can only slowly find the servers and devices that need to be configured based on his own experience. This is simply painful. I believe that every engineer who has performed remote assistance has a deep understanding of this.

Of course, the data center documents have another very important role, which is the inheritance of work. We can't expect staff to work in the data center all their lives. With document records, the handover of work becomes more efficient and can also achieve a kind of inheritance of document records.

The work team is an important part. If you are the person in charge of the data center and follow the establishment and expansion of the data center, even so you can't be responsible for everything. So a work team is very important. You can't always be responsible for everything, and when you are on vacation, you also need someone to follow up on your work.

The entire team should have a diagram of the data center, even the developer. If the developer's project is small and only one person is responsible for their own project, they may need to restart the server or check the line.

When you are not familiar with the network and server equipment, it is very time-consuming to deal with the problem, and it is more likely to cause other failures and errors. Especially through the structure diagram, even if you have not touched some equipment, you can easily operate it, which can save a lot of time.

The file should only be available to parties with knowledge or schematic planning that requires physical access. Consider security based on who might need access to the file and the risk if an unauthorized person sees the data it contains. If an intruder gains access to your data center and knows to take a server labeled "customer database," then a map will help them succeed.

Data center documents should be placed in a safe place, especially with permissioned access. If there is no permissioned access, anyone can access the data, which will be a big hazard to the security of the data center, especially hackers. Once they get the data (many documents in the data center contain username and password information), they can easily control the entire data center, so security prevention is very important for data documents.

Importance of document updates

In some ways, some data center documents are rarely updated, but at least it is better than nothing. IT departments often neglect to update documents, resulting in the content of the documents being different from the current situation.

Without documentation, sometimes you don’t know how to modify configurations and fix problems. However, outdated documentation can also cause technicians to take detours when handling problems. Imagine a system administrator who fails to log in because the password recorded in the documentation is not updated in time and instead thinks it is a system failure.

The data center structure diagram is not updated very frequently. But it should be updated immediately after the old equipment is removed from the shelf and the new equipment is put on the shelf, the network is upgraded, etc. It is best to record every step of the change management process.