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Small company. We have an fairly robust application we built that runs on AWS that serves many clients. Our Sys Admin / Lead Developer has left the company and took with him knowledge we didn't all share.

Our other developers easily picked up the coding. As the project manager I have picked up on how to generally manage the server deployments using both Laravel Forge and AWS as needed. Having worked at a general level in AWS for a number of years, I know the basics.

I have a high level understanding of the architecture but I do not fully understand all of the relationships between the elements.

I want to document the instances, IP'S, volumes, security groups, KEYS, etc, used and how the are related. Visually if possible, or at least in table form.

I'm slowly figuring out how to find everything.

Does anyone have any suggestions on a good way to create easy to understand documentation for a system?

I'm flogging this in Excel and Powerpoint, Gliphy etc. and I find myself starting over and reworking the layouts as I see there is a new relationship that I had not previously understood.

Any tips would be appreciated.

james f
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I haven't found a tool that does good, useful AWS diagrams automatically yet. I have a few tools I use if I want a list of resources:

  • AWS Tag Editor : built into AWS, just provides a list that you can export
  • Cloudockit : haven't used it but looks like it could be useful
  • CloudCraft.co : useful for lists and diagrams, but not as good at diagrams as I'd hoped
  • AWS Retriever : provides a list of AWS resources, but seems like beta software

I find draw.io or their offline client very effective for creating AWS diagrams.

Tim
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  • Thanks Tim. Cloudockit is like what I was thinking too. I'm checking these out. Thanks both of you. This is good info. – james f Jan 25 '20 at 01:14