This blog continues my discussion of the improvements that we have made to the Sun Cluster 3.2 documentation in response to a Voice of the Customer survey.

We identified four major customer requests in the VOC survey. For information on our response to the first two VOC requests, see Sun Cluster3.2 Documentation Responses to Voice-of-the-Customer Feedback.

Third Request: Provide Task-based Information

This VOC survey was designed to cover several Sun products. Fortunately, Sun Cluster procedural documentation is already task based, so this was an easy request for us. Sun Cluster introductory information and conceptual information that is not relevant to a specific task is provided in an introductory chapter or the Overview document. This separation of procedural and introductory information makes the procedures shorter and more concise.

Let me know if you think this separation in our documentation works well for you.

Fourth Request: Provide More Information for the Novice User

The original Sun Cluster documentation was targeted toward a sophisticated, well-trained, UNIX-savvy system administrator. Sun Cluster required that the customer receive extensive training before using the Sun Cluster product. As a result, our documentation tended to assume a high level of knowledge and some of our customers started to complain. Customers, it seemed, did not want to be required to hire senior system administrators to manage their clustered environment. And even the senior system administators did not always have the UNIX experience we required. Customers also told us that the person trained on Sun Cluster might not be the person who administers the cluster. As a result, we've added several documents to help the new cluster system administrator to quickly ramp up and get started with Sun Cluster.

Here are some examples of our new and improved documentation:

1. Sun Cluster Documentation Center

   This topic-based document helps novice users to find information more quickly in our Sun Cluster doc set. The documentation center begins with a Getting Started group of links specifically targeted for novice users.
   

2. Sun Cluster Overview

   This guide provides information on the Sun Cluster product along with an introduction to key concepts and the Sun Cluster architecture.
   

3. Quick Start Guide
   The Quick Start Guide provides detailed, easy-to-follow steps to install Sun Cluster in a configuration used by approximately 80% of our Sun Cluster customers.
   
4. (how-to) How To Install and Configure a Two-Node Cluster

   This "How To" provides simple task-based instructions for installing a two-node cluster.
   

5. Quick Reference Card

   The Quick Reference card provides simplified steps to perform the most commonly used Sun Cluster tasks. This card is available in a customized format to make printing easier.
   

6. Intro(1CL) man page

   This man page describes the new object-oriented command set for Sun Cluster 3.2. This man page also defines each of the new commands, provides short versions of the commands, and provides links to the command man pages.
   

7. Object-Oriented Commands appendix

   This appendix is included in each of our procedural docs and provides a quick reference to the new object-oriented commands in Sun Cluster 3.2. The appendix lists the command short forms, and their subcommands.
   

Rita McKissick
Sun Cluster Documentation