The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition

Chapter 9. Documentation

In system administration terms, documentation means keeping records of where things are, explaining how to do things, and making useful information available to customers. In general, SAs dislike writing documentation: There’s hardly enough time to do the work; why write documentation, too? The reason is that documentation helps in many ways, and a lack of documentation hurts SAs’ ability to do a good job.

It can be difficult to decide what to document. We recommend being selfish: Use documentation as a tool to make your work easier. Is the helpdesk flooded with the same few questions over and over? Provide documentation so that customers can help themselves. Are there tasks that you dislike doing? Document them so it ...