Network configuration archiving

Fri Oct 25 12:08:44 UTC 2013

SNMP is a good/ quick way to do it, however you should keep in mind that
your configurations are not being sent securely if you're using tftp. Cisco
devices do allow you to also use ftp, rcp, scp and sftp.

As far as I'm aware (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), but Cisco is
the only vendor that supports this.

It's almost as easy to have a python/ perl script to do the exact same
thing as Matthew described but with SSH instead of SNMP.

Regards

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Matthew Newton <mcn4 at leicester.ac.uk>wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 11:25:26PM +0200, Job Snijders wrote:
> > 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.
>
> For the last ~8 years we've used a very simple in-house bash
> script that uses SNMP to tell the switch to write its config using
> tftp, and then does a wr mem. It then checks the configs into a
> subversion repository and e-mails out any diffs.
>
> One criteria we had was that our config backup system wasn't going
> to get CLI access to any routers if at all possible, and this
> turned out to be a good alternative. I can't think of many times
> when it's failed to work; occasionally the odd switch might not
> respond, but that's rare.
>
> The only possible issue being that we're 100% Cisco, so I don't
> know if other vendors support the same MIBs.
>
> I'll try and post the script (250 lines) somewhere if anyone's
> interested.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Matthew
>
>
> --
> Matthew Newton, Ph.D. <mcn4 at le.ac.uk>
>
> Systems Specialist, Infrastructure Services,
> I.T. Services, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom
>
> For IT help contact helpdesk extn. 2253, <ithelp at le.ac.uk>
>
>