Managing IOS Configuration Snippets

Thu Feb 27 11:52:43 UTC 2014

For a large install I set up a solution that might help. I utilized a
Mediawiki install and its API to create, update and pull the
configuration on many IOS devices. A wiki page for the host name was
dynamically created and the configuration was placed there daily or
hourly. This allowed support to review the configuration and advise
customers quicker. Additional hacks for updating the devices via the
wiki were used. The goal was transparency for the support team and the
side effect was wiki page history showing what day and what lines
changed.  As mentioned the answer to your question would likely make a
good article.

On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Ryan Shea <ryanshea at google.com> wrote:
> Howdy network operator cognoscenti,
>
> I'd love to hear your creative and workable solutions for a way to track
> in-line the configuration revisions you have on your cisco-like devices.
> Let me clearify/frame:
>
> You have a set of tested/approved configurations for your routers which use
> IOS style configuration. These configurations of course are always refined
> and updated. You break these pieces of configuration into logical sections,
> for example a configuration file for NTP configuration, a file for control
> plane filter and store these in some revision control system. Put aside for
> the moment whether this is a reasonable way to comprehend deployed
> configurations. What methods do some of you use to know which version of a
> configuration you have deployed to a given router for auditing and update
> purposes? Remarks are a convenient way to do this for ACLs - but I don't
> have similar mechanics for top level configurations. About a decade ago I
> thought I'd be super clever and encode versioning information into the snmp
> location - but that is just awful and there is a much better way everyone
> is using, right? Flexible commenting on other vendors/platforms make this a
> bit easier.
>
> Assume that this version encoding perfectly captures what is on the router
> and that no person is monkeying with the config... version 77 of the
> control plane filter is the same everywhere.

-- 
~ Andrew "lathama" Latham lathama at gmail.com http://lathama.net ~