I come from a Unix background where documenting the configuration of a service (email for example) could be as simple as grabbing a few text configuration files and a paragraph or 2 of explanatory text.
Faced with documenting the configuration of a lot (50+) of Windows boxes I am dismayed to find out how difficult it is to get a view of a service configuration. I am building these machines from scratch so I am faced with the need to keep the configuration consistent across all machines. I will image all servers where practical using Ghost or similar but the actual configuration of services like AD or Exchange is such a manual point & click process that it could be easy to end up with inconsistencies.
How do people suggest I go about creating build documentation that will ensure consistency? and secondly how do you document the configuration without resorting to loads of screenshots etc? I am actually considering using Camtasia to grab a video of the configuration process which seems ridiculous.
Thanks for your help!
edit: Some of the answers below have been very helpful and I think will get me some way to where I would like to be. In particular, the use of answer files for scriptable installs will help to create consistent installations and some of the WMI tools will be very useful for documentation (LANsweeper, SYDisproject etc.)
What I really really want is to have a tool that could spit out all of the configuration into a human readable/editable format and also suck it all back in again. Unix has basically always done this with self-documenting config files so it is a great disappointment not to have the same facility in a supposedly modern OS!
Best Answer
You say you're building the sytems from scratch, so it sounds like you're more interested in the automated setup than you are grabbing configuration from a "live" system.
The installation of every version of Windows since Windows 2000 has been fairly straightforward to automate via "answer files".
The installation of Active Directory (dcpromo.exe) can be performed from an answer file.
Objects can be imported into Active Directory from CSV/LDIF files, or added programmatically via script. If you're creating a single domain those objects will only need to be imported once and CSV/LDIF import will probably be fine. If you're creating multiple domains or multiple forests then you'll probably be best served by writing a script (since distinguished names of objects will be different on a domain-for-domain, forest-for-forest basis).
The installation of every version of Exchange since Exchange 2000 can be automated with an answer file.
In an Active Directory environment a lot of configuration consistency can be had by using Group Policy to enforce settings on computers. I shoot for a goal of having all non-stock configuration settings re: the OS set by group policy such that when I deploy a new server I'm not hand-ticking configuration items (allowing 'Remote Desktop', running 'Add/Remove Windows Components' / SYSOCMGR to change the loaded Windows components, applying local filesystem and registry permissions, etc).
Beyond the initial installation of the products, knowledge about where each product stores its configuration will take you a long way toward consistency. Scripting to manipulate the filesystem and registry isn't a whole lot different on Windows than manipulating configuration files on a *nix machine. Where registry manipulation isn't appropriate there are typically command-line utilities to perform most other configuration tasks (netsh, the "net" command, resource kit tools, etc). I'd be fairly certain that most configuration tasks you're going to run up against have already been automated and made scriptable by somebody if you look hard enough.
re: disk imaging - If you have identical hardware you can get away with disk imaging after using the SYSPREP tool to reset the computer's security ID (SID) and prepare it for imaging. If you hardware isn't consistent, though, I'd recommend against disk imaging. Your server vendor, assuming it's a name brand, should have a "story" for automated OS deployment that includes provisioning the drivers for the hardware (OpenManage Server Assistant, SmartStart, etc).