Network Configuration Management

Stefan netfortius at gmail.com
Wed Mar 13 14:51:27 UTC 2013


On Mar 13, 2013 9:31 AM, "Eric Van Tol" <eric at atlantech.net> wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chip Marshall [mailto:chip at 2bithacker.net]
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:58 PM
> > To: nanog at nanog.org
> > Subject: Network Configuration Management
> >
> > Just curious what people are using for network configuration
> > manangement systems. I'm guessing most places have something
> > built in-house, but before starting down that road I figured it
> > would be a good idea to see if people have any off-the-shelf
> > systems they like.
> >
>
> Solarwinds NCM is what we use.  It's multivendor and even handles
menu-driven configurations and can easily be used to run commands on
devices such as Linux servers for iptables firewall rules.  It can perform
inventory management and do things like search for MAC addresses on your
network.  Moreover, it can do policy reporting to ensure that your devices
meet your configuration standards, both custom-made and for regulatory
compliance like HIPAA/SOX/PCI/etc.
>
> We used to use RANCID, which worked great, but we outgrew it when we
needed something to backup multiple vendors and didn't have the resources
to modify the code to do what we needed.
>
> As other posters mentioned, their sales force is unrelentless, even after
you purchase.  It took a lot of complaining to finally get off whatever
internal sales list we were on.  Cost is also a concern, as it increases
with the more devices you need to manage, plus there's a yearly maintenance
fee.  That said, I feel the cost is somewhat justified, as they have a
pretty good development team that is quite active on their support forums
and they listen to customer feedback for features.
>
> -evt
>

To those of you using Solarwinds: what about scalability? How many devices
do you presently support with this solution, and under which hardware or VM
and storage configuration, if you don't mind sharing that?

Stefan



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