When I asked my
friends on the Mark
Minasi Reader Forum
for some ideas on cool
free tools, Claus Nielsen
was one of the first to
email me. He wrote,
“We needed to document our servers, but it
seemed like a daunting task to begin from
scratch. Luckily I heard of the SYDI project.
SYDI was able to remotely gather 90 percent
of the information we needed from our
servers. So instead of spending two weeks
documenting servers, we spent two days.”
I decided to try SYDI-Server, the
SYDI version for documenting Windows
computers. (There are also versions
for documenting Microsoft Exchange,
Microsoft SQL Server, and Linux systems.)
Getting SYDI-Server was easy. You just go
to sydiproject.com and click the Download
link. Figuring out how to use it took
me a bit longer. Although the default run
command is shown next to the download
button, I first wanted to read about my options.
I eventually found a blog post where
the tool’s author explains those options
(click How-To on the home page, then
select How to Document Servers with SYDI),
which include being able to use it on
local and remote machines and to export
output to an XML file.
Deciding to run SYDI-Server in the default
mode on the local machine, I typed
cscript.exe sydi-server.vbs
at a command prompt and pressed Enter.
SYDI took off. A few minutes later, Microsoft
Word displayed a beautiful 35-page
report showing me documentation such
as the server’s name, IP addresses, installed
software, and security patches. The list
seemed to go on forever.
After just a few minutes with this free
tool, I could easily see why Claus was able
to document all his servers in just two
days. Great find, Claus!
—Eric B. Rux, senior Windows administrator and
cofounder of WHSHelp.com