Network configuration archiving

Thu Oct 24 21:25:26 UTC 2013

Dear all,

I am unsure what we as networkers have done in the past, but I am sure 
we've done our fair share of atonement and don't have to keep using 
RANCID.

Some might say "it took ages to get rancid to do kinda what we want!", 
but not all software ages well. One might work in environments where 
archived configurations are needed to even start provisioning, one 
might desire a separation between actual config and transcient data. 

As I am evaluating our path forward, I've compiled a small list of open 
source projects with some biased highlights. Your feedback is most 
welcome, maybe I missed some interesting projects or developments. I 
would also be very interested in what other operators seek in a network 
config/state archive tool.

RANCID - http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/
    * Support for a wild variery of devices and operating systems
    * complex perl code base [1]
    * no central developer team, the internet is littered with forks

Oxidized - https://github.com/ytti/oxidized
    * modern & sexy approach with queue & workers
    * RESTful API (example: can bump devices to the head of the queue)
    * small user & developer base
    * written in that ruby language

Gerty - https://github.com/ssinyagin/gerty
    * Seems easier to extend than RANCID
    * perl...
    * small user & developer base

punc - https://code.google.com/p/punc/
    * written in python, based on notch [2]
    * no recent developments (although 2011 was a good wine year)

[1] - http://honestnetworker.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/adding-new-device-support-to-rancid/
[2] - https://code.google.com/p/notch/

Kind regards,

Job

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