Network configuration archiving

Fri Oct 25 13:54:31 UTC 2013

How simple do you want to get?  We do something like this:

!
archive
 path tftp://1.2.3.4/$h-
 write-memory
!

-----Original Message-----
From: Job Snijders [mailto:job.snijders at hibernianetworks.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 5:25 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Network configuration archiving

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