Config Backup / Inventory

Fri Apr 24 13:46:18 UTC 2009

Check out HyperConf 

http://www.winagents.com/en/products/hyperconf/

It does multi-vendor device backups as well as a scripting function to blow out mass changes to devices.  They are also pretty easy to work with to enable new devices if you want them.  The licensing is somewhat reasonable.

Jon Wolberg
Operations Manager
PowerVPS / Defender Hosting
Defender Technologies Group, LLC.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua Eyres" <joshua.eyres at gmail.com>
To: nanog at nanog.org
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 4:25:05 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Config Backup / Inventory

Hi,

I am looking for a bit of advice around configuration backup / inventory. We
currently have a large multi-vendor network which is currently managed
through two separate tools (rancid - http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid and ns4
- http://www.noodles.org.uk/ns4.html). Both tools do the job very well, but
management have asked that we look for commercial alternatives that have a
proper support organisation looking after them.

IP Service Activator has been mentioned as something which can fit this
role, but I haven't had any experience and I haven't heard a lot of good
things about it. We are looking for a tool which is flexible that allows
configuration backup to textual form for easy restoration as well as the
ability to deploy scripted changes to the network quickly.

Do people generally use free tools for network management or are there
viable commercial alternatives?

Thanks,
Josh