Network configuration archiving

Fri Oct 25 04:19:08 UTC 2013

Rancid is great, we use it.  It's hard to justify paying money for
something that really isn't that complicated, especially stupid licensing
fees.

One of my problems with rancid though is that many of the commands it runs
can be somewhat intrusive, and also smacks of trying to use a configuration
management system as an active monitoring tool.

Go into the commandtable entries for your various devices, and remove
everything except the show running-config bits (or whatever your $vendor
uses) and you'll run into a lot less risk of blowing a device up with
rancid, also a lot quicker execution times.

Or just remove rancid entirely, and just ssh show running-config (using rsa
keys) on your devices and dump the output into cvs/svn/whatever.  Not
everything has ssh though.  :(

-chris

2013/10/24 Jon Lewis <jlewis at lewis.org>

> Or use perfectly good (RANCID + cvsweb) free software.  Hmm.
>
>
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2013, Kenneth McRae wrote:
>
>  By device or you can purchase an unlimited device count..
>> On Oct 24, 2013 8:59 PM, "Tammy Firefly" <tammy-lists at wiztech.biz> wrote:
>>
>>  Is that licensed per device or per user out of curiosity ?
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Oct 24, 2013, at 21:45, Kenneth McRae <kenneth.mcrae at dreamhost.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hiw about SolarWinds Config Mgmt software?
>>>> On Oct 24, 2013 8:38 PM, "Jimmy Hess" <mysidia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Job Snijders <
>>>>> job.snijders at hibernianetworks.**com<job.snijders at hibernianetworks.com>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>  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.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Does the nature of the codebase and future development matter all that
>>>>> much?    Not to dismiss it as a factor,   but I think other criteria
>>>>>
>>>> should
>>>
>>>> be more important  :)
>>>>>
>>>>> Nrmally  when I would want to compare software ----   I would be
>>>>>
>>>> concerned
>>>
>>>> first and foremost,     (1)  What does it do/what makes it unique --  is
>>>>> something special about  package X  over package Y?;
>>>>> (2)   Does it meet all the  minimum needs I have right now to be a
>>>>>
>>>> viable
>>>
>>>> solution?
>>>>>           Does it grab all my configs and  put them in a permanent
>>>>> revision control system?  :)
>>>>>
>>>>> (3) How reliable is it,  can I trust it?   Is it very secure and safe
>>>>> to
>>>>> use?    It's no good if it breaks, fails,  or does something dangerous.
>>>>> How much care and feeding will it need to keep working?          If it
>>>>> needs complex repair work every few weeks,  I don't like it.
>>>>>
>>>>> (4) How easy is it to get up and running,  and to perform any required
>>>>> ongoing maintenance
>>>>> (5) What extra nice to have functionality does it have?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> (6)  Maybe other stuff like  what language its written in,  if extra
>>>>> features need to be added
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> -JH
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**----------
>  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
>                              |  therefore you are
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