Re: speculations to characterize issues for Debian Enterprise
Hi again:
On Tuesday 24 August 2010 21:41:56 Russ Allbery wrote:
[...]
> I personally admit to using traditional wikis only grudgingly, since I'm
> not fond of the process of editing documents in a web browser, or in an
> editor spawned from a web browser. But as mentioned above, I'm not sure
> I'll have much time to do things beyond try to release our internal
> documentation and comment on the mailing lists, so that's not necessarily
> something to take into consideration.
Humm... I always thought the same but in practice I think the wiki advantages
surpass the limitations specially for sites where systems administration
depends on a team instead of a "solo show" (and that's the case for most
enterprisey environments).
I used Trac in the past with success due to its
documentation/tasks/configuration integration: you can go for the "whys and
whats" in the wiki where pointers to files, transactions, etc. within the
source management tool self-explains the "hows" and tasks integrate all of
that in the way of very simple but useful "howtos".
Wiki pages themselves I organize based on a "triangle" of interlinked pages:
* Hosts: describing hardware brands, guarantees, basic lay-out and services or
subservices implemented within.
* Services: describing the general architecture of broad, high-level services
(like "identity management", "corporate mail services", "disaster recovery",
etc.) pointing to the hosts that implement them and the associated
procedures. Links to relevant config files or transactions from the
repository instead of direct declaration of configuration changes within the
wiki page will insure docs are up-to-date with minimal effort.
* Procedures: standardized procedures (like adding a new user to the system or
deploying a new server), the services involved (i.e.: adding a new user
compromise a new LDAP-based account from the identity management service,
deploying a new workstation for him, incorporating the new user to some
projects/services, etc.) and the hosts involved. Where there's configuration
changes involved a link to a given repository transaction gives a useful
example.
> I don't think our goals match Wikipedia's goals.
Add a "me too" to this. I think that if Trac (or a Trac-like) offered its
wiki from text files stored at the source management tool (specially for easy
versioning and tagging but in order to make it easy for off-line edition) it
would make for a terribly powerful IT operations tool. Can anyone point to
such a beast?
Cheers.
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