Network Configuration Management Practices

Wed Sep 15 07:27:20 UTC 2004

Hmm, there are many approaches, starting with _what is primary_ (in Moscow's
ISP files was primary, in enterprise here configs are primary).

In my case, I use some hard rules:
- no matter what is primary, configurations should be stored into CVS or
simular system, and made available (for network engineers) on the internal
web (with restricted access);
- system should collect all changes automatically (or update configs from
files automatically), make diffs and send change reports.
- In any case, I must be able to see real configuration and see all changes,
applying for last few weeks, without telnetting to the box.

Without such things, I am blind ( I feel myself blind, when I come to the
new network, and they have not such things in their system, making changes
_on live servers_ and making 'telnet' to evaluate configuration).

Few tools (opensource and commercial) allows to automate this job.

One more thing. We tried to review _proposed changes_ and _changed applied_.
Practice showed, that it is impossible to see errors in proposed updates,
even if 3 - 4 engineers review it (not design flaws, but syntac and
semantics errors), so we did not got many use from pre-change reviews
(except design ones). But we got extremely high profit from post-change
reviews (verifying, what really changed on the router / firewall after
maintanance window) - it allows to see some unwanted changes and avoid few
possible service disruptions.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Weeks" <surfer at mauigateway.com>
To: "Carl W.Kalbfleisch" <c.kalbfleisch at comcast.net>
Cc: <nanog at merit.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: Network Configuration Management Practices

>
>
>
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Carl W.Kalbfleisch wrote:
>
> : I am doing some independent research on Network Configuration
> : Management Practices. I am trying to get information from service
> : providers and enterprises on how they handle this function. I have the
> : following specific questions:
> :
> : 1) What configuration issues most affect the performance and
> : reliability of your network?
>
>
> Fingers...  >;-)
>
> scott
>