nanog mailing list archives

Re: Managing IOS Configuration Snippets


From: Harry Hoffman <hhoffman () ip-solutions net>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 07:44:35 -0500

Wow, this sounds fantastic! Have any code you can share?

Cheers,
Harry

On Feb 27, 2014 6:52 AM, Andrew Latham <lathama () gmail com> wrote:

For a large install I set up a solution that might help. I utilized a 
Mediawiki install and its API to create, update and pull the 
configuration on many IOS devices. A wiki page for the host name was 
dynamically created and the configuration was placed there daily or 
hourly. This allowed support to review the configuration and advise 
customers quicker. Additional hacks for updating the devices via the 
wiki were used. The goal was transparency for the support team and the 
side effect was wiki page history showing what day and what lines 
changed.  As mentioned the answer to your question would likely make a 
good article. 

On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Ryan Shea <ryanshea () google com> wrote: 
Howdy network operator cognoscenti, 

I'd love to hear your creative and workable solutions for a way to track 
in-line the configuration revisions you have on your cisco-like devices. 
Let me clearify/frame: 

You have a set of tested/approved configurations for your routers which use 
IOS style configuration. These configurations of course are always refined 
and updated. You break these pieces of configuration into logical sections, 
for example a configuration file for NTP configuration, a file for control 
plane filter and store these in some revision control system. Put aside for 
the moment whether this is a reasonable way to comprehend deployed 
configurations. What methods do some of you use to know which version of a 
configuration you have deployed to a given router for auditing and update 
purposes? Remarks are a convenient way to do this for ACLs - but I don't 
have similar mechanics for top level configurations. About a decade ago I 
thought I'd be super clever and encode versioning information into the snmp 
location - but that is just awful and there is a much better way everyone 
is using, right? Flexible commenting on other vendors/platforms make this a 
bit easier. 

Assume that this version encoding perfectly captures what is on the router 
and that no person is monkeying with the config... version 77 of the 
control plane filter is the same everywhere. 



-- 
~ Andrew "lathama" Latham lathama () gmail com http://lathama.net ~ 


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