Documentation is always the bummer for the IT Professional. At itgroove, we try to excel at it (maybe because it’s an effort to set ourselves apart or gosh, because it is in the best interest of the client, whom we deeply respect and wish to keep).
One of the simplest ‘documentation’ techniques for keeping track of servers and what they do is simply employing use of the Active Directory object ‘Description Field’.
- We take it a step further and put SERVER:” in front, so when all objects are displayed, they are sorted by type.
The benefit here is this information gets picked up by lots of stuff (programs, lists, etc.) and in AD, you can tell at a glance what each servers intention is (the applications/roles it primarily provides). And while it may seem ‘simple’ or even overkill for an SBS environment, the importance here is a ‘standard’ and consistency. In environments with 2, 5, or 5000 servers, this becomes more and more important, so why not employ it everywhere?