Inventory before configuration
Controller mode, disk presentation, firmware, boot order, and network interfaces determine what the operating system can see. Recording the baseline prevents later symptoms from being mistaken for new failures.
Design for recovery
A large storage volume is not automatically a backup. Separating the operating system, service data, and recoverable copies makes rebuilds safer and exposes the real tradeoffs among capacity, resilience, and complexity.
Document the path back
The most useful build notes explain how to verify the current state, why each decision was made, and how to recover when an assumption fails. That turns a one-time project into reusable operational knowledge.