simple (one is written in awk) to the extremely full-featured. Some larger systems are including a Wiki as a feature, while some systems are built entirely around the Wiki concept, such as the infinitely fun and amazingly complete open source encyclopedia project, Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org).
Summary
A document repository can be a great time management tool.
A repository for customers can give them the information they need so they can bother you less.
A repository for internal IT information can help you by creating reference material that saves you time in the future. Checklists can be particularly useful—as are short notes describing how a tricky procedure was successfully done—so that others don't have to reinvent the wheel.
A procedure that is sufficiently documented is easier to delegate to someone else. Thus, we can remove a task from our to do list by giving it to someone else.
Wiki technology removes the entry barrier by making access easy and eliminating the need to learn HTML. By letting anyone edit (nearly) any page, the documents are more likely to be up-to-date.
Creating a document repository for your IT operation does not need to be intimidating. You can control the scope of the repository by choosing what to document. The templates included in this chapter can help you get started. Wiki technology lets a document grow and evolve over time.
It can be intimidating to start a new document. Wiki technology makes it easy to create a new document by handling all the linking for you. The initial document can be a simple checklist that will grow over time. You don't need to feel compelled to create the perfect document right from the start. Create something that is useful right now and let it evolve.
A Personal Information Repository
There is some information I want to take everywhere, but it is more than I can fit in a PDA. Certain information doesn't always need instant access, but some kind of access is valuable. Putting it on the Web makes it accessible nearly everywhere, especially with WiFi access being so common. Setting up a password-protected directory is relatively easy.
There is certain information that I keep in a Subversion repository. Subversion, like CVS or Microsoft SourceSafe, lets one access and update a repository of information from anywhere on the network. It's usually used for storing source code and tracking the changes. In theory, wherever I am, I can either download the latest version of the file repository or SSH to a machine that has access already established. I use my repository to store a very large address book and some other notes.
Chapter 13. Automation
Automating our tasks is a special treat. In what other career can we program machines to do our jobs for us? Oh, if only it were that easy. Automating something takes time, but the payback can be enormous.
This chapter doesn't attempt to teach Perl, Python, Ruby, Unix shell, VBasic, or Kix32. Instead, this chapter is about why we automate, what to automate, and how to automate. I'll also include some shortcuts that have helped me through the years.
Automation has the obvious benefit of reducing work for you because the task becomes quicker to do or—through Unix cron or Windows Scheduler—happens automatically without any intervention at all. An unexpected benefit is that an automated task is easier to delegate. Any task you can foist onto someone else is a special victory.
Is It Automated Enough?
Adam Moskowitz, a well-known SA, tells me that his litmus test for whether something is 'automated enough' is that he can delegate the task to someone less skilled. For example, once, he automated his company's disk backups to the point that the company secretary was able to take over the daily tape-changing tasks. Each day, the system would send email to her and Adam with the status of the previous night's backup. Usually, the system would simply output instructions about which tapes to change. If there was a failure, she knew not to touch the system until Adam had fixed the problem. Over time, he was able to modify the software to handle more and more failure cases. Soon the system would go months without requiring his intervention.
In this chapter, I will use the terms script and program to mean different things.