VM Documentation?

[boss99]

Just out of question, how do you guys document your virutal environment? I have some VMs in my home network with the rest of my day to day stuff, some in a virtual environment which is isolated (for now), and I'm planning on implementing a DMZ with a couple web servers but I'm at a loss as far as how to document it through Visio. How do you guys do it?

 

[shnelson]

It all depends on what you are trying to show.

High level? Plot out your esxi hosts and draw a hypervisor on top of them. On top of that, create some rectangles for logical separation of function - ie |LAN| |DMZ| |GUEST|. Stack your virtual hosts within their respective logical unit.

I'll either take a screenshot of the NIC configuration screen and include it somewhere on the visio, identifying each vlan with colors that match the logical function above.


Do you want someone to be able to rebuild your environment from scratch with said visio? If so, you'll need to get pretty granular

 

[boss99]

I'm a network guy by trade so documenting a network is pretty straightforward (i.e. an ethernet cable only has one other physical destination) compared to trying and to document my ESXi lab.

I've called out all my virtuals and having done so makes some things a lot clearer (like how my DMZ is going to be configured) and some things I just don't know how I'm going to do it (like my NTOP network monitoring which has a leg in all my networks).

The NIC screenshot is a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Chilly]

Everyone will have their own "style" of doing things. Some are easier to read and understand than others, but there isn't any real "right" or "wrong" method. Take a look around online and get a feel for how others plot out their designs.

Here's a few links to get ideas and inspiration from;
http://virtualfng.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/srm-in-findings-in-the-lab-30/
http://www.hypervizor.com/diags/vCloud-Director-MGMT-Pod-Private-Cloud-v-1.pdf
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1576393
http://www.hypervizor.com/diagrams/

 

[Mr.Pernod]

we tend to split the physical and virtual layers in our documentation.
the diagram of the hosts and storage looks a lot like the lower half of the diagram shown here.
the diagram of the VM's, vSwitches and VLANs is basically the same as a network diagram would be for any physical environment.

 

[jonathonball]

For us it usually ends up being a box outside of the server on the network diagram that lists the services running in the VM

 

[renixinq]

I'm a network guy by trade so documenting a network is pretty straightforward (i.e. an ethernet cable only has one other physical destination) compared to trying and to document my ESXi lab.

I've called out all my virtuals and having done so makes some things a lot clearer (like how my DMZ is going to be configured) and some things I just don't know how I'm going to do it (like my NTOP network monitoring which has a leg in all my networks).

The NIC screenshot is a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

Everyone had really good examples already, just thought I'd chime in as well. Your ethernet cable only has one physical destination in a VMWare environment as well, a vSwitch. The physical NIC is closer to a bridge/media converter as it's taking the ethernet frames and converting them to virtual ethernet frames and passing them from the copper to the vSwitch. So in documenting it from a physical swith you could portray the host NIC as a media converter, than show a path from the NIC to the proper vSwitch which than the paths to your VMs. Mostly what I've seen though, is showing the host NICs as part of a vSwitch with the physical connections landing on the NICs.