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Chapter 1. The Philosophy of System Administration

1.2. Document Everything

If given the choice between installing a brand new server and writing a procedural document on

performing system backups, the average system administrator would install the new server every

time. While this is not at all unusual, the fact is that you must document what you do. Many system

administrators will put off doing the necessary documentation for a variety of reasons:

"I will get around to it later."

Unfortunately, this is usually not true. Even if a system administrator is not kidding themselves,

the nature of the job is such that things are usually too chaotic to "do it later." Even worse, the

longer it is put off, the more that is forgotten, leading to a much less detailed (and therefore, less

useful) document.

"Why write it up? I will remember it."

Unless you are one of those rare individuals with a photographic memory, no, you will not

remember it. Or worse, you will remember only half of it, not realizing that you are missing

the full story. This leads to wasted time either trying to relearn what you had forgotten or fixing

what you had broken due to not knowing the whole story.

"If I keep it in my head, they will not fire me   I will have job security!"

While this may work for a while, invariably it leads to less   not more   job security. Think

for a moment about what may happen during an emergency. You may not be available; your

documentation may save the day by letting someone else resolve the problem in your absence.

And never forget that emergencies tend to be times when upper management pays close attention.

In such cases, it is better to have your documentation be part of the solution than it is for your

unavailability to be part of the problem.

In addition, if you are part of a small but growing organization, eventually there will be a need for

another system administrator. How will this person learn to back you up if everything is in your

head? Worst yet, not documenting may make you so indispensable that you might not be able to

advance your career. You could end up working for the very person that was hired to assist you.

Hopefully you are now sold on the benefits of system documentation. That brings us to the next

question: What should you document? Here is a partial list:

Policies

Policies are written to formalize and clarify the relationship you have with your user community.

They make it clear to your users how their requests for resources and/or assistance will be han 

dled. The nature, style, and method of disseminating policies to your user community will vary

from organization to organization.

Procedures

Procedures are any step by step sequence of actions that must be taken to accomplish a certain

task. Procedures to be documented can include backup procedures, user account management

procedures, problem reporting procedures, and so on. Like automation, if a procedure is followed

more than once, it is a good idea to document it.

Changes

A large part of a system administrator's career revolves around making changes   configuring

systems for maximum performance, tweaking scripts, modifying printer configuration files, etc.