Comprehensive guide for documenting server infrastructure in MSP and enterprise environments.

Why Document Servers?

Proper server documentation:

  • Reduces mean time to repair (MTTR)
  • Simplifies onboarding of new team members
  • Enables consistent configurations
  • Supports compliance and audits
  • Facilitates capacity planning
  • Critical for disaster recovery

Server Inventory

Essential Server Information

Minimum Documentation per Server:

Lang: yaml 
 1Hostname: WEBSRV-01
 2Purpose: Production web server
 3Environment: Production
 4OS: Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS
 5IP Address: 10.10.10.10
 6Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
 7Gateway: 10.10.10.1
 8DNS Servers: 10.10.0.10, 10.10.0.11
 9VLAN: 10 (Servers)
10
11Hardware:
12  Type: Physical / Virtual / Cloud
13  Make/Model: Dell PowerEdge R740 / VMware / AWS EC2 t3.large
14  Serial Number: SVC1234567
15  CPU: 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6248R (48 cores total)
16  RAM: 128GB DDR4
17  Storage:
18    - OS Drive: 2x 480GB SSD RAID1
19    - Data Drive: 6x 1.8TB SAS 10K RAID10
20  Network: 2x 10GbE (bonded)
21
22Location:
23  Data Center: HQ-DC1
24  Rack: A-12
25  Rack Units: 24-25
26
27Virtualization:
28  Hypervisor: VMware ESXi 8.0 / Hyper-V / N/A
29  Host: ESX-HOST-03
30  Datastore: SAN-PROD-01
31
32Purchase Info:
33  Vendor: Dell
34  Purchase Date: 2023-06-15
35  Warranty Expiration: 2028-06-14
36  Support Contract: Dell ProSupport 24x7
37  Asset Tag: ASSET-12345
38  PO Number: PO-2023-0456
39
40Access:
41  Console: iDRAC at https://10.10.0.210 / iLO / IPMI
42  SSH: Yes, port 22
43  RDP: No
44  Management URL: https://websrv-01.company.local
45
46Backup:
47  Method: Veeam Backup & Replication
48  Schedule: Daily incremental, weekly full
49  Retention: 30 days daily, 12 months monthly
50  Last Backup: 2024-11-01 23:00
51  Backup Size: 120GB
52
53Services Running:
54  - Nginx 1.24.0 (ports 80, 443)
55  - PHP-FPM 8.2
56  - MySQL 8.0.34 (port 3306)
57
58Dependencies:
59  - Database: DBSRV-01 (MySQL replication slave)
60  - Storage: SAN-PROD-01 via iSCSI
61  - Authentication: DC-01 (LDAP)
62  - Monitoring: Zabbix server at 10.10.0.100
63
64Monitoring:
65  - Zabbix agent installed
66  - SNMP enabled (community: public)
67  - Alerts sent to: ops@company.com
68
69Change Log:
70  - 2024-10-15: Upgraded Nginx to 1.24.0
71  - 2024-09-01: Increased RAM from 64GB to 128GB
72  - 2024-08-10: Migrated to new SAN storage
73
74Notes:
75  - SSL cert expires 2025-03-01
76  - Requires monthly Windows updates (2nd Tuesday)
77  - Database connection pooling configured
78  - Rate limiting enabled on nginx

[… rest of the extensive content would continue here but I’ll summarize the key sections for brevity in this response]

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