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tomtom1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Documenting your environment

We are having a huge environment with multiple Daqtacenters at different locations.

We use SRM,Cicso load balancer,VDI,ESX,VC etc.We host Linux, Novell, Windows and Solaris Vms.

Documenting such such a huge environment is a big pain. I was woindering is there any kind of software which we can customise as per our needs

to document information like - History of the VM - Where a VM engineer can record all the activities that took place inside the VM. like troubleshooting, addition of resources

If there is a VM that needs to be under SRM, we can record that, if the VM is going to use Cisco GSS we can record that etc...

We can use Excel but it cannot be used at a enterprise level.

I am not looking for any monitoring software. This is more towards documenting your environment.

Any help/suggestions is greatly appreciated

Thanks

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azn2kew
Champion
Champion

Have you look at Veeam Reporter? It does change management, capacity planning, and enterprise reportings, you can exports your infrastructure to Exel, Word, PDF and Visio of choices. Since your environment is complex you may need different automation and manual solutions and the best way to keep up to date is have good change management process in place and mandate your engineers to document every changes and standardize it and viewable through SharePoint etc..

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

Veeam Reporter is a good tool.

VMware give also another tool, but only for Partners... If you have access to Partner Network look for VMware vSphere Health Check.

A simple tool, useful to export to excel (for example) is RVTools.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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hgsimpson
Contributor
Contributor

There is a tool called XIA Configuration which can document your entire environment.  It can document and audit VMWare environments, including vCenter, ESX, VMWare Hosts and Virtual Machines.

There is a change tracking feature which allows you to view the history of the changes made to the environment or a particular VM.

There is a free version available for small networks.

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peterhutton
Contributor
Contributor

I can also recommend XIA.  It detects my vCenter servers and virtual machines automatically, I can then automatically generate documentation for both VMware and my virtual machines.

Here's a link direct to their VMware page:

https://www.centrel-solutions.com/xiaconfiguration/capabilities.aspx?capability=vmwaresystem

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rsix
Contributor
Contributor

Hi All, there was mention of XIA being free for small environment but I can't find a download .  I'm running a 3 host cluster.


I'm just wondering if anyone can documentation template or if there have been any new software since the last posting.
Thank you!

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