Track changes to Servers, etc...

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VeeDubbs

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2005
Messages
398
Hi all -

I've been given a task from my boss to develop a new way to track changes done to servers. So we have something to help us determine what changes may have caused any problems (if and when they occur) Originally, there was just the server log -- a binder that we would write in. That is no longer being used.

After that, I took it upon myself to come up with an idea. So, I searched the Internet and found a free Wiki -- Twiki. Not the greatest product; hard to navigate, etc...but it was free. But, turned out nobody used it.

So, what are you guys doing? I know at some point a policy will have to be made to write down changes, no matter what (even if we don't like how we're doing it). But, hopefully, the easier to use, the more it will be used.

Any suggestions?
 
Agreed. Only the people authorized to make changes should have access to make the changes. Everyone else is just a user.

However, depending on how large the company is, using something such as "Change Control" might help. We use ITG from Mercury (HP) that we setup, and we enter in what we want to change, when we want to change, how we will change, why we want to change it, and what will we do should the change fail. Then we identify people who can approve the change. Once that is approved, then the change can be done.

it's very tedious, and again, depending on the size of the company, the amount of techs, or the amount of servers, could be a waste of time. Here, we manage over 1600 Unix servers, and 800+ windows servers. Changes are only done if approved unless they are unqualified dev or test servers. People have lost their jobs here as a result of making an undocumented and unapproved change, no matter how shit-hot they were at their job.
 
Yeah the two suggestions above still wont solve the problem of an Admin who is authorized to have have access screwing up a config or fat fingering a setting.

Bottom line to me, you need to establish a change management/control process, part of it is procedural and part of it will be a vendor provided software (We use mercury as well). Without change management lock down all you want, when you screw up the server you will still spend hours backtracking your actions, or giving up and recovering from a backup.

Google Change Management or Change Control, there are established IT practices that are well documented and practiced by pretty much all Fortune 1000 companies.
 
gutkin said:
Yeah the two suggestions above still wont solve the problem of an Admin who is authorized to have have access screwing up a config or fat fingering a setting.

Bottom line to me, you need to establish a change management/control process, part of it is procedural and part of it will be a vendor provided software (We use mercury as well). Without change management lock down all you want, when you screw up the server you will still spend hours backtracking your actions, or giving up and recovering from a backup.

Google Change Management or Change Control, there are established IT practices that are well documented and practiced by pretty much all Fortune 1000 companies.
Click to expand...

Thank you gutkin.

It's not a matter of unauthorized people making changes. There are only two of us who make changes to servers; however, we may not always communicate those to each other. And what happens if I'm here but the other goes on vacation. Or we make a change in March, think everything is fine, until users start complaining in June saying "It was fine until sometime in March".

We just want to know what changes are made and when. So we can look back to it.

Thanks again!
 
Yes -- we use a system called HelpTrac. Are you suggesting to use that everytime we make a change? That's a possibility...
 
Well, if you guys dont mind creating a ticket for yourselves when doing a change. That way, its in a database somewhere, and if you need to in the scenario you mentioned, do a search for that system name, it should return tickets for that system. Maybe narrowing with filters such as Category: Change or putting CHANGE in the title.
 
You might want to look at TripWire: http://www.tripwire.com/

I've never used it before, but it seems to be what you're looking for. I thought there was a free version at one point, but I guess they got rid of it (or is buried somewhere).
 
I use atlassian jira, it's alright. we have projects set up to handle documentation/ticketing or config changes.
 
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