Documentation

Why Documentation Matters

Good documentation is the foundation of reliable IT operations. It reduces troubleshooting time, enables consistent configurations, supports compliance requirements, and ensures business continuity when key team members are unavailable.

What You’ll Find Here

This section provides comprehensive documentation templates and standards for MSP and enterprise environments. Each guide includes:

• Templates - Ready-to-use formats you can adapt to your environment
• Standards - Best practices for maintaining consistent documentation
• Examples - Real-world samples from production environments
• Checklists - Quick references to ensure nothing is missed

Available Documentation

Infrastructure Documentation

• Network Documentation Standards - Standards and templates for documenting network topology, device configurations, IP addressing, and VLANs
• Server Documentation Standards - Templates for documenting server hardware, OS configurations, applications, and dependencies

Operational Procedures

• Backup and Recovery Procedures - Backup strategies, retention policies, and disaster recovery runbooks
• Incident Response Runbook - Security incident response procedures, escalation paths, and forensics guidelines

Best Practices

Keep It Current

• Update documentation immediately after changes
• Schedule quarterly reviews
• Use version control (Git) for tracking changes

Make It Accessible

• Store in a centralized location (wiki, SharePoint, Git repo)
• Ensure team members know where to find it
• Keep offline copies for disaster recovery

Make It Useful

• Write for your audience (assume they’re unfamiliar with the system)
• Include screenshots and diagrams
• Test procedures by having someone else follow them

Related Articles